If you know me at all, you know that I am a full supporter of the Apple brand and owner of multiple products bearing their logo. Why?  It just works.  I purchased the original iPhone the day it was released and anxiously awaited the release of the iPhone 4. Due to my original 2g phone dying Memorial Day weekend, I was unable to pre-order the new phone; resigning myself to waiting in line on June 29th; the day AT&T had phones available for retail purchase. Showing up at my local store around 7:00 am, I was greeted by a line of other iPhone enthusiasts...stretching around the side and back of the store. As the store opened and the line slowly crept forward, we were greeted and kept up to date on what to expect by Tom, an AT&T store employee.  Tom supplied answers to our questions as well as water for the mostly patient, soon to be iPhone 4 owners.  He even managed to provide one customer with a bagel because she was so hungry.  Tom told everyone he was not a usual staff member at this store, he was just a floater; someone that worked where needed.  This man could write a book on customer service.  If someone had a specific question; he asked their name; went inside to find the answer, if he did not know it himself; and then would return with the information.  It was a pleasure to watch someone excel at customer service.  The entire staff at the AT&T store performed very well during a busy and challenging day. The AT&T and Apple experience was an example of customer service done the right way.  What follows is an unfortunate example of the exact opposite; customer service done the wrong way. In addition to my consulting business, I work as Marketing Director for Consolidated Construction Services.  In this roll, I work to educate the public on what Consolidated does as well as manage all marketing efforts including their online presence.  One of my goals is to make sure that Consolidated is getting the best return on the money they spend on marketing efforts; including their website. To that regard, we made the decision to move hosting of their website to a new company.  I know the owner of the hosting company and have a deep comfort level with their abilities and organization.  If you wish to check them out, need hosting or design services contact them: Next Generation Designs. I notified the former hosting company during a phone call on June 29th; due to several reasons, we had not made the decision on moving the hosting until the end of June. Our hosting was up for renewal on July 1st and I committed to Bill Norton, the owner of The LakeNet and ComNet Web Solutions that, due to the late notice, we would pay for an additional thirty to sixty days of hosting and that this could serve as our notice of not renewing our contract.  That did not go over well with Mr. Norton; he stated that we had to pay for another year of hosting.....although we were moving our site and email to a new hosting company!  Within fifteen minutes of our phone call, he suspended our website and email accounts; ignored our phone calls and was completely unresponsive....although we still had time left on our hosting contract!!  After  a couple of hours, he restored the site and email account access so that Next Generation Designs could move it to their servers.  He then fired off an illiterate email to me and blind copied the owner of Consolidated on the email.  The owner's response?  "I want the entire world to know how unprofessional he is." I have not included links to Mr. Norton's company on purpose because I am not going to promote this person or this type of behavior.  Maybe he was upset because we didn't purchase the $18,000 blog and advertising package he pitched to us. You read that correctly....an $18,000 package. Customer service is not hard; if a company the size of AT&T can provide exceptional service with the launch of the largest product in Apple's history, a local hosting company could at least strive to provide decent service. That is what I say; what say you?