[adrianparsons]

This was an aside at the end of the article, but what an interesting strategy:

I bought the stock for the same reason I buy stock in every hotel, airline, bank, and similar I use: in the unlikely event a not-particularly-high-stakes poker player has a routine customer service complaint, Investor Relations is available as an escalation strategy, over e.g. hotel staff who might be long-since inured to listening to complaints from people who lost money in a casino.

[pc86]

I'm sure this works if you're buying a couple thousand shares at a time but I don't think buying 10 shares of Southwest is going to make them listen to you any more or less when you have an issue on your flight.

[pie_flavor]

It doesn't matter whether they actually value you any more. The point is that investor relations is staffed by competent people, as opposed to customer service which is staffed by incompetent people as an intentional matter of efficient human capital allocation. So you can get much more reliable help if you can present the right class signals, and if you are at least theoretically allowed to call that line.

[icedchai]

Do you think they're going to ask for proof and how many shares you own? Anyone can claim to be an "investor."

[roenxi]

Companies literally keep a big list of all the people who have shares and how many, in case they want to send out a dividend or something. If they think it is important to check it is easy to do once they have a name. Realistically the cost of checking is probably higher than just dealing with the issue at hand so they won't.

Though it is impolite to lie.

[icedchai]

Stocks are generally held in the name of the broker (“street name”), not the individual. I’m not saying they can’t check but I wouldn’t bet on them calling up Schwab to verify you really own 10 shares of UAL.

[gruez]

>Companies literally keep a big list of all the people who have shares and how many, in case they want to send out a dividend or something. If they think it is important to check it is easy to do once they have a name.

I thought companies only knew the brokerage, and it was the brokerage who could tie it back to a specific person ?

[anitil]

I believe patio11 probably does this to satisfy his own ethics rather than as a strict necessity

Edit: and I see downstream he has an answer

[patio11]

They literally have no computer system that can tell them the difference between you and a hedge fund manager, and so an email to IR fairly reliably gets the white glove treatment. I used to send them on behalf of, cliched but accurately, Kansan pensioners to banks, in at least one case justified by “I am a shareholder because my IRA holds SPY, which holds your common. It was therefore with great displeasure that…”

(Obviously one can still email IR without actually owning a share, but I both prefer not lying and also enjoy the aesthetics of capitalism, which are extremely invested—ba dum bum—in seeing someone who owns one share as a shareholder.)

Anyhow: bored person, near top of org chart, with access to escalation group if that exists, who earns six figures and really wants you to come away from the experience satisfied. Exists in almost every publicly traded company in America.

[_--__--__]

That was a slightly unfortunate choice of example because my groggy Friday-afternoon mind assumed 'Kan-san' was some sort of polite and idiomatic term for 田舎 dwellers and wasted a few minutes trying to figure out what it was short for.

[wging]

if anyone else was similarly confused: a 'Kansan' is someone from the US state of Kansas.

[gruez]

>They literally have no computer system that can tell them the difference between you and a hedge fund manager, and so an email to IR [...]

The "From" header on the email? It might be possible someone sending from a @gmail.com address is a hedgie, but if they want to announce their affiliation they'll use their company email.

[wging]

I think the idea is to take advantage of certain legal obligations that are triggered by ownership of any size.

[plagiarist]

Could you give some examples? I have no idea what legal differences would provide a benefit during customer interactions.

[tptacek]

Has nothing to do with legal differences. It's just a different customer service team you end up talking to. It's in the same class of tricks as knowing the precise set of prompts to give to get immediately to a human operator when you call the main line.

[WillyF]

Have done this twice recently. Did not own shares in either company outside of likely ownership in 401ks or index funds. They don’t check. Ridiculously effective.

[xp84]

I wonder how this could apply to American health insurance companies, where the company is very open about how diametrically opposed the interests of their investors are to the interests of their insured. I can’t even figure out how I would phrase my displeasure as an investor that the dirtbags at Anthem are denying vital healthcare to their “customers.” I suspect they’d reply “You’re welcome!”

[ajkjk]

He's written a bunch about this approach. Not sure where the main article is but here's one: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r...

[WorkerBee28474]

Tangentially, some cruise lines offer credit to customers who are also shareholders.

https://www.cruisecompete.com/shareholderbenefits.php

[aprilthird2021]

Wow this was huge to learn. Thanks!