Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Customer Service At It's Best

I've spent the last few hours roaming the house, kicking the walls and mumbling obscenities to myself. I have scared the dogs, dented my toes and sort of damaged the door to the pantry.
Note: Yelling random things about people being idiots and 'hello! Identity fraud you dill hole' at no one in particular may be fine while in your own home, but doing so while standing on your front porch waiting for your dog to get done doing his business makes your neighbors run away.
I got a letter today. A letter from a credit card company to a certain unnamed store (twits!) about my credit card with them.
A credit card that I don't have.
One that I never applied for.
Sufficiently concerned, and slightly suspicious since the name of the store (dingus!) was not on the letter, I called the number that was microscopically printed on the bottom (bastards!).
Have I ever mentioned how much I hate talking to robots? Those stupid automated answering services that wait for you to say a certain thing and then come back with a 'Sorry, I did not understand that. Could you repeat your request?' when all you said was that you wanted to talk to a real live person and not be lost on the phone with a robot for 45 minutes. I do. Hate them I mean. It's rather difficult to ask questions and get real answers as to what is going on when you can't talk to an actual person. UPS does it too. It's one of the many reasons I hate UPS. Well, that and the fact that our UPS guy refuses to ring our bell when we need to sign for a package. He sticks a note on the door and then runs away even as you are chasing after him yelling 'wait'. I once sat on my porch for 4 hours waiting for him because I knew it was the only way I was getting my package. He looked pissed when he saw me sitting there and didn't even notice when I signed 'bite me' instead of my name.
Anyway, I sat on the phone with the robot for long enough to start crying and begging to speak to a real person and I don't know why, but it worked. Unless, maybe as I've often wondered, that robot was an actual person totally screwing with my head.
So real 'person' (tomato brain) comes on and says 'what'.
What?
How about 'what the hell?'
I explain that I got this letter about a credit card that I never applied for and I don't even know who they are and could she tell me what's going on?
*SIGH*
Oh. Yes. This should be fun.
In the most I'm-bored-and-you're-stupid tone she could muster, she said the name of the store and suggested that I had a credit card with a different store in the past. How having a card with a different store (which I didn't) would translate to this card now I don't know but that was my first indication that this was going to be way more difficult than was necessary.
She insisted upon the date that I opened this account, I insisted that I had not opened this account and could she please close it.
She demanded my social security number. I assured her she didn't need the full number.
This is where she began to YELL AT ME.
Ho.ly. Shit.
I offered her the last half just to confirm that she had it and she offered to hang up on me.
Joe came in the room at which point I told him "Dude, this lady is yelling at me and I'm not really sure why."
Meanwhile she's screaming "Ma'am" in my ear until I think I'm going to go deaf and I started to shake because I was getting pissed.
She finally let me confirm my information without giving her the full number (seriously? was that really such a big deal to just take the last 4 digits and then verify it with the rest of the info?).
After which, she smugly reported that if I didn't open an account with them then how did she have that information?
Hello dumb ass, welcome to this century. Have you ever read a newspaper, watch TV, or maybe listened when any one has ever mentioned the words 'identity theft' to you?
But, still wanting to maintain some level of decency here, I told her to please stop yelling at me and consider that someone else may have opened the account with my information. At any rate it didn't matter, the account needed to be closed.
She continued to yell in my ear (I'm holding the phone away from my head and Joe can hear her from across the room. It was like talking to my MIL only more pleasant) about how I opened an account and no one else could have given them that information but whatever because she was closing the account.
And then she hung up on me and I didn't even have the opportunity to tell her that the sticky side of that maxi was supposed to go down. So, sorry. I may have been able to save the next person's eardrums but she was way too fast on that hang-up for me.