Dateline 9-12-2016

Well, this has been a wasted day stuck on the phone with customer support.

For those of you who know me well in the real world, you know that I get hyper anxious when it comes to talking on the phone.  Even if I desperately want to talk to someone, I freeze up when the phone rings and opt to instead text back with some excuse as to why I can't talk at the moment. This is why I've been putting off today's phone call for a little over a week now, and the results have only added my annoyance with the non-personal talking technology.

Last week one of my benefits was randomly reactivated. I should have received money on what happened to be Labor Day. At first, I just wrote it off as being a holiday thing and since I wasn't in a big rush to use the funds I just decided to wait it out.

Two days later, I knew this wasn't going to sort itself out so I started to hype myself up to deal with customer support.

A week past and I finally decided today was the day.

It wasn't going to be the day but I woke up nice and early and thought, "Why not?"

First, it took me forever to find the actual number that I needed. Sure there was a phone number on the card that I use but for some reason, there was no way to talk to a human through this line. I tried the trick of hitting zero only to have the automated service hang up on me. I spent over a half hour trying all the options but everything led to a dead end.

At this point, I was only a little annoyed. I went to the site where I check my balance and the only contact information I could find was the same information on the back of my card. My level of annoyance boosted as I then had to hunt down alternative contact information.

It took a while, but I eventually found the golden number. Feeling I was on the right track, my mood started to calm as I dialed. The calming didn't last long as I was then put on hold for over a half hour to a partially robotic voice explaining my options to take care of my issues online. The worst part was, there were no pauses between the repeating of this information. The same message played over and over again without the slightest of breaks to listen to the background music.

It was actually close to an hour before a human actually answered the phone. After taking all my information he asked me what I needed, to then inform me that he had to transfer me to another department to take care of my needs. My level of annoyance raised but I was happy that the next person I talked to was going to take care of my problem.

She answered the phone and was very pleasant. She informed me that my account was deactivated because I never sent in additional information that I never received in the first place. Apparently, their policy change and not everyone was informed about the procedures. 

Again, I was annoyed but the problem was getting solve. The woman on the phone then informed me that I could fill out everything I needed online. I was very excited because I could barely make out what she was saying over the phone and everything is easier when you can do it online. She gave me the information and I was on my way.

I logged onto the site and was excited that I was taking care of this issue I was putting off. The excitement shifted to anger as I couldn't find the link she told me was there. I'm not an idiot when it comes to the internet so this wasn't a matter of me being an old man confused by technology. I found where the link should be but the link was not available because my account was deactivated. 

Now I was two hours into my day and nowhere near solving my problem that I had the solution to. I was also pissed at this point because I knew this meant I'd have another hour on the phone. I don't know why but I always seem to be right when it comes to negative expectations.

After another half hour on the phone, I got another human, a human that was confused by why I was told to go to the site when my account was deactivated. He explained to me what I had already figured out then informed me that I would have to be transferred to some other person to take care of my needs.

I thought I was on hold when I started to grumble cursing to myself about being transferred. I was caught off guard when he tried to calm me by saying this was a direct connect and the person I was being transferred to would already have my information. I apologized, only to start cursing again when I...

ENDED UP ON HOLD...

Not only that but when the person did answer she asked me for all my contact information for the fourth time for the day. She didn't even know why I was calling, which is fine but why did this other guy tell me she would.

This lady had a strong accent that I could barely understand, but she was the person I needed and helped me by filling out the form I was trying to fill out online. This was a useless process because my status hadn't changed since signing up for the service but I had to go through a checklist denying changes to questions I could barely make heads or tails from.

Other than the language barrier this interaction was fine. I was told that I had to fax in a paystub to finish off the process then call back when I was done. 

I found a stub that I thought would work and spent another half hour on hold just to confirm the fax went through. Of course, the information wasn't properly dispensed because I faxed over a stub for the work that I did for the month and not the stub for the payment I received for the month which other than the dates are exactly the same as I work the same amount of hours every month. 

I don't think I would have been as upset if I hadn't spent close to four hours on this issue that would have taken fifteen minutes if I was properly informed and wouldn't have been a problem at all if they would have informed me that their policy had changed and I needed to provide this information to avoid my account being deactivated in the first place.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the case so this build up call center chaos caused me to explode and what started as grumbling to myself quickly turned to me yelling at the phone as I hung up while this woman tried to explain how she couldn't help.

I feel bad because it wasn't her fault but after dealing with five different people you would think I would have gotten the proper information from some combination of the crew.

I found the right stub, sent it over and tried to call once again, only to get a robot saying the volume of calls was too high for their staff to handle, then it hung up on me. After that, I was done for the day. The positive mood I had going into the day was completely gone and after four hours, I could handle being on the phone any longer.

Now I have to deal with this shit tomorrow. I wish I could just leave it alone in hopes that they would see that I sent in the new form but I don't trust that there is a system set up for that or I wouldn't have had me call back to confirm completion. 

Hopefully, it's a Monday thing I can get this over with quickly when I call tomorrow. They now have all the information that they need and I now know for sure that the information they have is correct. If I have to call more than once to finalize the process, I'm half tempted to give up altogether.

Sorry for the rambling but this is what my day was.

We'll see what happens tomorrow.

Talk to you then,

- The Wicker Breaker