This morning I called USAA after looking over my auto claim on their website and seeing no movement whatsoever; I bypassed the extension of the adjuster who had haphazardly contacted me and tried to get someone else on the phone, but they were too smart for me and I wound up in her voicemail box again. After leaving a clearly dissatisfied message, I put it aside until this afternoon. Checking back in on the site, I found no movement. I looked away from my laptop and when I looked back I saw a prompt for a review of their service. Fed up by this point, I left them a not-so-friendly but detailed summary of my frustration and hit send.

Two minutes later the house phone rang and a rep from USAA—not the one who I’d previously been playing phone tag with—introduced himself politely, stepped me through the details, and gave me a valuation on the car quite a bit beyond what I’d been thinking it would be. He advised me on next steps, answered my questions, and said goodbye. It was like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders; this was what I’d been asking for the whole time.

There’s a phenomena that I’ve noticed at times like these, when I’ve reached my boiling point, I’ve been frustrated by poor customer service, or just ignored: the Sky Pilot will provide me with some means of griping through an official channel, and seconds after I’m done spewing bile I’ll be contacted by someone else at the offending organization who is absolutely the nicest person in the world, who answers all my questions and provides the best experience possible, and I wind up feeling like an entitled asshole.

There’s clearly some kind of message I’m being sent. Should I start mass-producing scathing Yelp reviews?