Home >  Lifestyle >  Consumer

Friday, December 28, 2001

By Lawrence Walsh, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Ah, the delightful days of childhood. The days of casually strolling out of the house and eliciting a decibel-shattering admonition from an exasperated parent:

"Close the door!"

	Steve Schonberger of McKeesport tried for more than a year to get the Port Authority to repair this door at the McKeesport Transportation Center. (Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette)

And, in the winter, those gentle words often were followed by:

"WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO, HEAT THE OUTDOORS?!"

Steve Schonberger of McKeesport is familiar with that scenario.

He tried for more than a year to get the Port Authority to repair a side door on the first floor of the McKeesport Transportation Center on Lysle Boulevard.

The hardware for its door closure was removed to repair a front door about 10 feet away. Once someone opened the cannibalized door, it stayed open until someone closed it. Meanwhile, the forced air heat used to heat the 400-square-foot passenger waiting room literally went out the door.

Schonberger has a record of the e-mails he sent, the phone calls he made and the names of some of the customer service representatives he spoke to.

"The customer service representatives were very nice," he said. "A man named Oliver remembered I had spoken to him before about the door. But it seems no one pays any attention to them."

Schonberger, 32, a client service consultant for Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, suspended his fix-the-door campaign in April when warm weather returned.

When colder weather returned recently, Schonberger renewed his efforts to repair the door.

No luck.

He then called me. We made arrangements to meet at the center.

The center is an odd-shaped, two-story building that was dedicated on Dec. 21, 1981. The waiting room is illuminated by seven banks of fluorescent lights. It contains a Pepsi vending machine, a public telephone and a broken water fountain.

There are three ticket windows at one end of the room, but no one was staffing them when I was there. The schedules for 15 bus routes are taped to the inside of the glass. A glass-enclosed bulletin board contained no notices.

Schonberger showed me and Post-Gazette photographer Steve Mellon where the door closure had been removed at the top of the door.

"They told me they were looking for a new door closure, then they told me they couldn't find one and then they told me that type of closure isn't made anymore," he said.

"I told them they should be able to find something that would close the door after someone used it. And it shouldn't take this long to find it."

Several other Port Authority customers waiting for their buses echoed Schonberger's comments.

Betty Harvey, 71, of Elizabeth Township, a retired clerical worker, also said she missed the seats that used to be in the center.

"It made it a lot nicer to wait for my bus," Harvey said.

Customers who want to sit down have to use the wooden benches outside, an option that is no option during the winter for most of them, especially senior citizens.

I called Bob Grove, a spokesman for the authority, and told him about Schonberger's problem with the door.

"I'll get back to you," he said.

Grove called yesterday to report the door had been repaired. "Our facilities systems people took care of it," he said.

Schonberger confirmed it. "The door now functions properly.

"This whole episode was one of the most frustrating of my life," he said. "The Port Authority claims the 'Gold Standard' of customer service [but], as someone who has many years of customer service experience, [it] did not meet that standard here."

No, it didn't.

May it do better in 2002.

Lawrence Walsh can be reached at 412-263-1895. His e-mail address is lwalsh@post-gazette.com.