Inane:
Main Entry: 1inane
Pronunciation: i-'nAn
Function: adjective
Inflected Form(s): inan·er; -est
Etymology: Latin inanis
1 : EMPTY, INSUBSTANTIAL
2 : lacking significance, meaning, or point : SILLY
Main Entry: 2inane
Function: noun
: void or empty space, a voyage into the limitless inane
(mirriamwebster.com)
It's gone. An entire hour of my life sucked into the void. Just like that. I'll never get it back.
Two conversations.
It's not even like they were worth becoming passionate over. Inanity (no, it wasn't a word till I just made it up) at its best. Or maybe its worst?
First one. Someone needs a form. I've never seen such a form. I inquire about said form, calmly ignoring the pointed comment that indeed someone went over this form with me already. So I spend the next 30 minutes of my life chasing down said form, filling it out, and then participating in one of the most inane conversations ever. You know, those kind in which someone tells you one thing and then the next sentence out of their mouth completely contradicts the prior. You can't believe that an experience this pointless isn't just as obvious to the person creating it . It's almost surreal. I patiently plod through the mostly one-sided exchange that results in this parting shot.
"Oh. I guess you don't need this form afterall." As if I were the one who had instigated the entire episode.
OK. C'est la vie. Eventually moments like that become almost funny.
Unless you have to relive them again the very same day.
Second one. This afternoon I arrive home to find my cell phone service has been suspended. Knowing I just paid my bill on Monday, January 1, 2007 (invoice dated 12/20/06, received 12/26/06--it is the holidays, you know), I call the phone number printed on my Cingular cell phone bill--a number specifically designated for such queries. Immediately I am transferred to another number and an impersonal voice tells me, "To avoid being transferred in the future, please call our correct contact number..."
Should have been my first clue.
The customer service (has there ever been a worse oxymoron than "customer service") person begins a routine that sounds remarkably like the one I experienced earlier. She says one thing. I don't even have to bother with a response because her very next words contradict her last. The best part is when she tells me AT&T has cancelled my service.
"I don't have an account with AT&T," I reply. This bill and all those prior clearly state they are from Cingular (which, to my knowledge, bought out AT&T ages ago).
"Well, it's really AT&T." (The duality of a company name that sounds like "singular" is not lost on me.)
Whatever. So I ask how to contact AT&T. I'm told I can't. Apparently they can suspend my service, but I am not allowed to contact them to ask why or to have it restored. I promptly but politely express my dissatisfaction with that situation. Something about that being ridiculous and how customers are not going to be very happy being treated in this way (meaning since when is it OK to shut off a good customer for nonpayment without any notice less than a week after they would've received their bill and then render them powerless to restore service?).
Then I am told almost with a snicker that things are going to be even worse when Cingular becomes AT&T.
"Say what?"
AT&T became Cingular and now Cingular is becoming AT&T. "Don't you ever watch the news?" The woman sneers. She informs me that soon I won't have any choice buy to jump through the hoops they set out for me. They're buying up everyone and will eventually be the only cellular service provider anywhere, she says.
How Clintonesque: Because we can.
I ask if I could speak with a supervisor. "They can't help you," I am told.
Finally, toward the end of the pointless call and completely out of the blue I am offered a bread crumb. Another phone number. This is the old accounts management number for AT&T. It may or may not work.
After another 20 minutes of inane conversation and coma-inducing hold music my service is restored. (The best part of that call? When the woman trying to restore my service asked me if I was talking to her on my cellular phone. Duh, no!) Still never an explanation how a bill I received from Cingular and paid within less than a week of receiving it is somehow past due to AT&T, who hasn't owned my account for ages. How or why my service was suspended and I ended up suspended between two separate entities specializing in customer nonservice. Never an apology. Nothing.
Just the ticking by of thirty more minutes in the realm of the absurd.
Don't you ever wonder, "Is it really worth it?"
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21 comments:
"This call may be monitored or recorded to ensure quality service."
Pleaseohpleaseohplease, I hope those were monitored and/or recorded.
Keep at it. A lot of it is, I think, to see how much work you're willing to do. Keep at it.
Another one for the record. What makes the "customer [dis]service even better is when the person of the other end is 6,000 miles away and clearly reading from a scripted dialogue and you know that English is still far from their grasp of understanding and speaking.
Have you ever lost count of how many "menus" and "sub-menus" you are routed through before you finally get a voice with a pulse?
I totally love it when the right hand hasn't a clue as to what the left hand is doing. How inane can you get?
Thanks for letting me laugh at your expense.
We've had the same battle with our new electric company, Dynowatt. We switched from Houston's main provider to save money. We're on automatic billing which means they get their money like clockwork around the 10th of every month, and yet we get a pink "notice of disconnect" every single freakin month. They even riled up for very mellow Papi who finally told them off last week.
One day the world will be perfect. We will be perfect. These kind of people/companies will no longer exist. Hope for the future keeps my sanity in check.
We have gone through this also. We signed up with Cingular for our cellphones on a pkg. deal with SBC which also included internet and home phone. We received the Cingular bill separately. Then AT&T bought SBC. And they started advertising how we could combine them and have one bill for all. So, we did that and right after the first time we paid that combined bill they cut off our service and practically every month since (6? 7?) we have had to call to correct something on the bill, going thru the same kind of run around you discribe. We finally got wise and put them on speakerphone instead of trying to hold the phone to our ear for an hour listening to elevator music. My thought is that we have a very lucrative plan that is no longer offer and want us to do a new contract.
Good luck!
Lyle, here's a little something to keep handy on your next wild goose chase.
And I didn't even mention all the letters I have written to every single vice president of Comcast from the first time my landline was out for an entire week due to their incompetence. I spent over $20 in cell phone bills alone just to have the service restored.
The second time my landline was out it took four phone calls at $.25/minute to get service restored.
And then there was last month when I tried to order an external hard drive for my husband for Christmas. No 800 number, so the call was on me. It took 10 minutes for the guy to understand in simple English (he finally had me read the URL so he could find the webpage I was on) only for him to say, "I soty. We no hav dat."
ARGHHHHHHHH!
And ~j's right. We all have to keep fighting the good fight because every time we call and work our way through all the crap in order to stand up for ourselves we are standing up for every other poor customer they're trying to stick it to as well.
Oh, I forgot the UPS girl who told me once and then confirmed it again that the Christmas books I had ordered from Amazon, which were promised to be delivered by 12/22, had already been scanned in at the Salt Lake store and would arrive the next day. (She even made up fake arrival times.) When in fact they were all stuck in a snow storm in Colorado and would not arrive till 12/27.
HAHAHAHA, say I, to the electric company named Dynowatt.
Oh CW - I have a Cingular/AT&T story as well. I've been saving it for a really good blog entry. Maybe I'll post it this week.
Ooooh I love this post. I have these conversations with insurance companies on a regular basis. They want preauthorization, so I call the mental health number. They transfer me to a medical menu. I stay on hold 20 minutes to get a human, only to be transferred back to mental health, and the same menu, blah blah blah blahbetty blah blah. Only when I start telling the 10th person I've told the same stinkin' story to that I'm about to have a mental health crisis of my own if someone doesn't get me to the person who can make something happen does something actually happen. And do you know what? They wanted to speak to me to find out the diagnosis code. Hello! I could have emailed them that a week ago. I am not embellishing when I say that this most recent process went on for a whole week--in between appts I'd try again and again to get the thing resolved.
I've been lied to, too. That is maddening.
azucar--please do tell, I have only about two more weeks to get out of the contract before I'm committed for two years. Of course then I need to find a competitive plan, and so far I haven't found any that come close. It might make it worth it to pay a little more, however, if I don't have to put up with all the garbage.
(Last night I called and dropped by the kiosk three times becasue the only one who can help me with my bill is the guy who sold me the plan. They kept telling me "he'll be here at 5:00," 'He's coming in from a managament meeting from SLC, he'll be here any time," and then "He called in sick." "He'll call you back tonight before 11." He didn't. I can see already where this is going.
GET OUT while you can.
I went to t-mobile and they, while cold and German, have never reached the levels of inanity that I experienced at Cingular-AT&T. Lots of people like Verizon too. Let's face it, all cell companies stink, it's just that some stink a little less.
Don't you ever wonder if you're living in a Kafka novel?
Exactly! What I actually thought of was "Waiting for Godot." Only that had more of a point.
I heart t-mobile.
I went in to T-mobile tonight (I still have 17 days to shop around) and it was like that scene from Pretty Woman (the edited version) in which she goes into the store and they completely dismiss her. It's like I was invisible. Seriously. (And it's not like I'm that hard to miss.)
I also checked out Verizon and they spent more time bashing Cingular than selling Verizon.
Azucar's right. They all stink. If the guy I'm working with at Cingular--he was finally in tonight--continues to be as helpful as he has been, it might really be OK to stay put.
It's kind of like iProvo. It's worth it to put up with the imperfections because at least you can walk into the office and talk to a human being and that person 1.) speaks English (assuming that's your language of choice) and b.) when face to face with you will really try to help you.
Would it really be such a bad thing if I were "forced" to walk into University Mall once a month to haggle over my cell phone bill? (Bath & Body Works' bottom line certainly wouldn't suffer.)
Oh NO. Do NOT got to the T-mobile store, they are the worst. Handle it online or over the phone.
I ordered my phone over Amazon because it was free with some internet-based company that contracted with T-Mobile. Well, free with rebate. I called T-mobile directly and I went into the store, they couldn't match the 3rd party dealer. Interesting, non?
After I got the phone, I activated it, and contacted T-Mobile customer service. They ported my phone number from Cingular. The important thing is that you DON'T shut down your Cingular account before your number is ported (IF you want to keep your number.)
So gay.
Did you cuss?
Cuz I woulda cussed.
My husband is insisting that we are switching EVERYTHING over to comcast in Feb. after our Dishnetwork thing runs out....while I'd love to say my opinion or anybody else's mattered to him-it doesn't so at least it will give me fodder for a good blog come spring.
Hm. Well, I've had nothing but good customer service from Verizon. I hate their store in the mall, but their phone customer service is terrific. I called to complain one day, because my phone kept dropping calls. I told the man that I was so frustrated, I was ready to chuck my phone through the window. In his adorable southern accent, he said, "Why, Ms. Julie, that is 'unaseptable'. I do apologize." And proceeded to try to fix the problem. :)
I'm a sucker for a good southern drawl.
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