Unscrewed: The Consumer's Guide to Getting What You Paid For: Burley
(See online!)

This book is very similar to another of my favorites: How to Complain for Fun And Profit, but the difference is that the complain book is about getting resolution for being treated badly, bad customer service, or otherwise making a case for why a company should consider giving you a break/a pass/or exception.

Unscrewed is a lot more aggressive, but effective in situations where a company owes you something, but refuses to comply. It's not for the weak of heart, but it does give you techniques to get resolution quickly and effectively as long as you are willing to hold their feet to the fire.

For those who are resolute not to be taken advantage of, this is a must have.

It looks like some companies haven't forgotten what customer service is supposed to mean. Airtran reportedly corrected a mistaken booking and didn't charge anything to do it!

A lady accidentally booked her flight from Baltimore instead of Philadelphia, most likely do to website form goofs or just plain human error.

I have no idea why these two ticket counter attendants took it upon themselves to help me out of such a stupid mistake, but I really appreciate their assistance. The situation was entirely and completely my fault, yet they fixed it for me. Frankly, I was shocked; in an age when airlines charge for everything from extra pretzels to water bottles, I was completely floored that my ticket was corrected at no charge. But more than that, I'm grateful. I haven't flown Airtran very many times but if this is any indication of the level of service provided, Airtran is becoming my preferred airline.

I couldn't have said it better myself. For today at least, AirTran, you deserve a kudos!

(Image used under: Creative Commons 3.0 [SRC])

The Consumerist has a large list of "executive service" contact information.

Executive customer service is a firewall team that keeps your complaints from disturbing busy executives golf games. Very often, they do this by actually solving your problems, possessing superhuman powers to command all parts of the company to action, from billing to technical.

If the company you need isn't on the list, they have a method for finding the executive customer service contact information for just about anyone as well.