[This is written by Monty Snow, a guest columnist for WatchdogNation.com.]

I had a very unusual experience that ran counter to the norm, and I thought you might like to hear it.

My wife Rochelle and I had found this little lamp at IKEA that we just loved and couldn’t find anywhere else. Trouble was, they were out of stock. So, we tracked it on their website until, according to the website, it was in stock.

So, I drove to Frisco and guess what?  It was still out of stock.  I asked about it and they apologized for a computer glitch.  So, I drove home and waited a couple of weeks and checked it again.  Now it was in stock.  So, I drove to Frisco.

When I drove back to Frisco and found it STILL out of stock, I asked if I could buy the display model, but the woman who was stocking the lighting section told me that was against company policy.  I noted that they had two display models and what difference was it going to make if they had one or two, especially since a customer had been inconvenienced twice by their error.  She couldn’t violate company policy.

So, I sought out a supervisor.  I couldn’t find any offices.  It seems that all the supervisors at IKEA are working on the floor.  So, I asked a worker where I could find one, and he pointed to a guy across the floor who was standing in front of a computer while another guy was talking in one ear while he was answering his phone with the other.  I didn’t think there was any way this guy was going to help me, but I waited patiently, and when I got a chance, I told him my story.

He was a young man, quiet and polite, and as soon as I finished, he asked me to wait by the checkout, and he headed toward lighting, answering his phone as he went.  He was gone 10 or 15 minutes, and didn’t come back until he had found the lamp I had been looking for.  I was very impressed by his willingness to go out of his way to help a customer when all he really had to do was repeat company policy, so I asked him for his name and wrote it down.

When I got home I wrote a letter to his boss telling him how this supervisor had gone out of his way to provide service in what is pretty much a self-service operation.

Well, you know how I tend to overdo things, so on a whim, I wrote the founder of IKEA, Ingvar Kamprad – in Sweden.  This guy is the richest man in Europe and the fifth richest man in the world.  Never in a million years did I expect a reply.  So I was shocked when an envelope with Swedish postage arrived.  Here is the letter.

Dear Mr. Snow!

How very kind of you to take time and write about your experience in our IKEA store in Frisco, Texas.  You certainly make me feel very proud of our staff there, particularly Mr. Ruigu!

I apologize for taking so long to reply to your letter which had taken some time to reach me.

You point to the risk of impersonality in a business like ours, and I could not agree more.  We try to maintain the spirit of the small Swedish company we once were, and itis not always easy.  I often use the Swedish word “Tillsammans” – meaning “together” – to underline how very important each one of us are for the total result.  That is a lesson I learnt very early on the farm where I grew up in Sweden.  It has followed me ever since.

Again, my heartfelt thanks for you letter.  I wish you and your family a joyful Christmas and look forward to see you again in one of our stores.

Ingvar Kamprad

(The signature indented the back of the paper and appears to be genuine, rather than machine-generated).

On Facebook, which last week bragged about its 300^th million user and first-time profitability, you have “Friends.” You don’t have “Enemies.”

Or do you?

WatchdogNation.com wants everyone to learn some new Facebook terms that don’t necessarily show up in the company’s amazing corporate history.

Compromised account.

Account takeover.

Account hijack.

Definition: term used to describe when an unknown scamster gains control of your account, often resulting in a fairly believable plea to your friends for money to rescue you from disaster.

That’s my definition. Feel free to rewrite in the comments.

Let me show you how it works. This research first appeared in the September 20, 2009 Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the best paper in Texas, in the Dave Lieber column.

* * *

While on Facebook recently, Gary Rifkin received an instant message from his friend Karen Cortell Reisman.

“Hey Kar, how’s it going?” he typed back.

“Not too good at the moment,” she answered.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“I’m in a deep mess as we speak and I need your financial assistance,” she answered.

She explained that she was in London “and we got mugged at gunpoint.”

“Oh my God,” Rifkin said. “Are you okay?”

“Yes. Cash, credit card and phone got stolen. It was a brutal experience.”

“How are you going to get home?” he asked.

“That is the main problem now. I need your financial assistance.”

“How much do you need?” he asked.

“All I need is $1,300.”

“Where should I send it?”

The address was in London.

“Hang in there,” he advised, a transcript of the conversation shows.

Rifkin never sent the money. He knew he wasn’t talking to his friend but someone pretending to be her. He knew his friend was at home in Dallas.

Reisman, meanwhile, started getting frantic phone calls from friends asking, “Are you OK?”

As she told me later, “It was stunning to see how fast this grew over the course of one day.”

She calls the whole experience “the day I got hijacked on Facebook.”

Reisman uses Facebook as part of her speaking and coaching business. But she couldn’t get into her account because her password no longer worked. She tried to call Facebook’s corporate office in Palo Alto, Calif., but she couldn’t find the phone number. (Note: 650-543-4800)

She found the help page on Facebook that led to a contact form that put her in touch with the security team.

When Facebook e-mailed her a new password, she worried that it, too, was a hoax. But it wasn’t. She got her Facebook page back.

None of her friends sent money, but most called to see whether she was OK. “I was so touched by the concern of so many people,” she said.

In Facebook lingo, her account was compromised, company spokesman Simon Axten said.

Reisman has no idea how it happened. In all probability, Axten said, scammers learned her password through phishing.

That’s when a user goes to a fraudulent Web site that looks like the real thing. The person enters his or her login information, and then the crooks have what they need.

I can see how this happens. Sometimes I get an e-mail on an account that Facebook doesn’t know about. The e-mail asks me to look at Facebook photos. But I’d have to log in to Facebook. I ignore it.

The Facebook spokesman says scammers re-create e-mails that look like ones Facebook sends out. They might say that a friend has commented on your link or that you were tagged in a photo.

“We advise people to be careful when they’re clicking on e-mails, and especially links,” Axten said. “And when they do click on a link, check the URL [Web address]. If it’s not www.Facebook.com and it’s something else, most likely it’s a phishing site. Be careful.”

He suggests that when a friend claims to be in trouble, test the friend’s identity by asking key questions (“Where did we have lunch together last week?”).

The number of accounts compromised is very low, Axten said, considering that Facebook has 300 million worldwide.

“But obviously the consequences are pretty severe if someone ends up sending money. That’s a significant loss. As a result, we’re taking it very seriously, as we do any security threats.”

How?

Facebook monitors users who start sending out lots of messages or making “wall” posts. Facebook may block or disable the account until the mystery can be solved, he said.

Passwords should be complex, with a variety of letters and numbers.

Reisman changed all her passwords after her experience – for Facebook and for her bank, e-mail, other social media sites and credit cards.

Previously, she said, “I used the same password for everything because life is short and I can’t remember everything.”

Now she keeps a separate list of passwords.

Facebook isn’t as much fun for her now.

“It’s left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth,” she said. “But Facebook came through, in my opinion, because they really did react to the problem in a fairly quick manner.”

Do you use the same password for multiple accounts? Or simple passwords, easy to figure out, like the name of your dog?

Remember that the best password is a combination of letters, numbers and punctuation marks. Always be careful when entering it into any e-mail that is sent to you.

And please feel free to share your detailed stories about similar problems – along with suggestions about how we can protect ourselves in the comments below.

* * *

Learn more about protecting yourself in the national-award winning book about social change, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong. Visit www.WatchdogNation.com.

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Facebook Protection TIPS

- Be suspicious of friends who ask for money. Test their identity. Ask others who know them to verify any questionable situations that arise.

- If you see something suspicious on a friend’s account, go to the help link on the lower-right corner of a Facebook page and report it to the Help Center.

- Learn about security tips at www.facebook.com/security.

- Choose a strong password and don’t use it for other Web accounts.

- Use an up-to-date Web browser that offers anti-phishing features.

- Run anti-virus software on your computer.

- Reset your Facebook password if you suspect that your account has been compromised.

- Become a fan of Facebook at www.facebook.com/facebook to get the latest security announcements.

Source: Facebook

Every day of every week, I get mail and e-mails from Americans who want help fighting corruption and stupidity in government and business.

Today, for example, I heard from Bill, who has been trying for weeks to get someone from a local hospital to help him with a bill that he says he doesn’t owe.

I heard from Cecelia, an 80-year-old woman who has called her satellite TV company many times without success to complain about poor wiring. When she finally cancelled, they sent a collection agency to harass her “with daily calls, morning, noon and night. I have medical conditions that have been aggravated by these calls.”

And I heard from Gwen, 88, whose cable TV company assured her the installation charge would be $9.99. Instead, she got a bill for $149.95.

Fortunately, I’ve been doing this long enough so that I know key executives at each of these companies. I’ve already sent copies of letters from Bill, Cecelia and Gwen. I expect all three will hear from these companies in the next few days.

But this silly procedure of mine – taking complaints and passing them on – doesn’t get to the root of the problem. It’s a temporary fix. I help one, but thousands suffer from the same problem.

Each of these companies has broken or struggling customer-service cultures. OK, that’s putting it kindly. They stink. They rot to hell. They ruin days and nights for their customers with their never-ending incompetence.

And that’s the reason I can’t get David Avrin’s story out of my mind. I always wondered what happens behind the secretive doors of America’s top corporations when top executives figure out that they need to bring somebody in from the outside to help their employees see the light.

Avrin, known as The Visibility Coach, is one of the smartest people I’ve met when it comes to image-building and branding. He understands the trinity of media, public relations and advertising as well as anyonee’s a classy guy, too – Don Draper without the adultery. His specialty is coaching chief executive officers.

And that’s how he ended up telling the story about how he was called into a major corporation to help settle internal customer-service issues. But then, as he explains, he walks into a huge trap of his own making. He’s sitting there, facing the CEO, and because of his own boneheaded move, he has nothing left to give.

Avrin’s brutal honestly in his story helps me see how Bill, Cecelia and Gwen can’t get satisfaction. Please read David Avrin’s moving story here – and find out how he became part of the problem he was supposed to fix.

How hard is it to find a good, inexpensive and honest roofer, plumber, painter or contractor?

If you’ve ever been burned, you know the answer to that.

Monty Snow, a leading citizen of Watchdog Nation, sent us a recent note, which he granted permission to share:

Just a personal note about consumer (self) protection. You know, after my experience with a plumbing company that charged me $250 to dig 1-foot-deep holes, I decided to find a good plumber before I needed one again (lesson 1).

So I started checking websites, looking at customer reviews, and I found a guy who everybody seemed to love. You could tell from their reviews that it wasn’t just about plumbing – they really liked the guy. So I emailed him and asked him straight out how much he charges and how he calculates it. He wrote me back immediately, was very straightforward, no b.s., and he told me exactly what I wanted to know.

I needed him sooner than I thought I would – twice in fact. He came out, used only the best of materals, did a first-class job each time, and the total for both calls was $250 – the big fancy company had charged me to dig the hole.

But I went a step further. I figured if this guy was honest and reliable, he probably used honest and reliable people when he needed something done around the house. So, when my air conditioner acted up, I sent the plumber an email and asked him who he uses. He gave me the guy’s name and number, said he never used anybody else (Networking – lesson 2).

I called the a/c guy and he was out the next day, fixed only what I needed, didn’t try to sell me anything, was extremely pleasant and reasonable. When I need an electrician, I’m gonna call the plumber and the a/c guy.

Watchdog Nation hears that all the time. Dave Lieber was interviewed on radio station KYQX-FM by Linda Brooks Bagwell recently on her “Books ‘n Authors” show, which is broadcast on a chain of radio station throughout North Central and East Texas. The subject was Watchdog Nation.

Here is a caller, Gary, complaining about a subject that grates on all of our nerves. Banks charges that nickel and dime you to death. Dave’s talk with the man on the radio.

Gary later attended a book signing at Lark Bookstore in Weatherford and told Lieber that the reason he went to the bank in question to cash the check was to see if a new customer’s check was any good. He said he has been burned too many times in his business by bad checks. The bank in question was close to the customer’s location.