February 09, 2011

AmeriGas's Phony Fran Found this Blog

GWherever people post complaints on the Web about AmeriGas's poor propane service, "Fran" is not far behind.

Fran wants you to contact her directly, and she will take care of things.

As if.

Fran is a fake.

Today she found my two recent posts about problems with AmeriGas: "AmeriGas: We'll Let You Freeze" and "AmeriGas: Poor Customer Service—Nationwide!"

"Fran" posted her usual cut-and-paste offer to help. "Hello, my name is Fran and I work for AmeriGas . . ."

But phony Fran fouled up. She signed in with her Blogger account, revealing that she is not "Fran," a competent, take-charge, fix-the-problem sort of gal, but one Stasia DeMarco from the Philadelphia area.

She is listed as blogger or co-blogger on no fewer than eight Blogspot blogs, none of which have been updated since 2010, and some not since 2008 or 2009. (I smell some kind of search engine-optimization scheme here.) Some are (were) co-blogged with one Bob DeMarco, identified as a "veteran Wall Street executive."

She hosts podcasts for Drexel University in Philadelphia. She has a Web site. She Tweets (but not about Amerigas.) She does radio work. And so on.

And she is the phony face of Fran for AmeriGas, part of their pitiful excuse for customer service on the Web.

Times must be tough. Maybe she fell victim to some kind of "work at home, make big money misusing social media" pitch from AmeriGas.

I expect that she is merely one of a group of phony Frans.

And that is how AmeriGas treats its customers—with phoniness and fake concern.

3 comments:

Holly Heyser said...

Ouch!!!! Ha ha ha ha ha....

Cat Urbigkit said...

Good one!

Heather Houlahan said...

Because a blogger can't possibly have the specialized technical savvy to use Google.

Or follow back-links.

Ever get the feeling that the new position of "Director of Social Media Marketing" at a Any Given Ebil Corporation is a nineteen-year-old former nail art technician named Mykynly, who reports to a geezer who is under the impression that there's a system of tubes out there saying bad things about his company?