Wrinkly Bits
A Blog by Gail Cushman
I opened my email a few days ago and found a note from my phone provider. “Final Notice $151.49, past due. Your phone will be suspended if it isn’t paid.” What? I always pay my bills. I printed it, fuming all the while. Maybe it was a scam. Luckily there was a “contact us” box, so I hit it. Phone or chat? Oh yea. Phoning big companies risks talking to someone based in a far-away country speaking English as a second, third, or even fourth language, but chats were usually helpful. I hit “chat.”
After waiting for about 45 minutes, someone came on, but I had the wrong department. No worries, she connected me with another person and I waited for them to answer. Oops, wrong department. She couldn’t find my info, but she had tried, and finally said, “I’ll connect you with the right department. Hang on.” She connected me with the original department, which went silent before they could talk to me. I decided to go local and called the number for the local phone company, but that led me down a whole series of rabbit holes until my fingers were bleeding from punching buttons. But I got to person number three or four (I lost track). Wrong department, and he sent me to a whole different number, but that person actually answered the phone. At least I think it was a real person. I can’t tell these days because AI likes to fool me. AI-Game Playing, I call it. I’m two hours and four people into this project, and Cowboy says, “Let’s go to lunch.” After lunch, I try again, and got a real person on the first ring. His name was Derrick and he was helpful. “You don’t owe anything. I don’t even see your account number.” Well, wahoo! Just as I thought, but it didn’t end there.
Yesterday, we visited the phone company, in person. Five phone techs were available, smiling and happy. doing something on their phones. Cowboy and I were the only customers. We wanted to merge our phones into one bill, instead of the four we currently paid, hoping it would stop bogus bills, like the one I had wrestled with the previous day. They opened at 9: oo AM and my techie was fired up, ready to go. She’s knowledgeable and likeable and I felt confident. She dialed this number and that number and before long, she handed me the phone, and says, “Fraud Department wants to talk to you.”
Fraud Department? Are you kidding? I stood at attention while reciting my name rank and serial number. He then asked date of birth, address, how long I lived in Montana and a bunch of other questions. By this time, we had been in the phone store in excess of two hours. Food trucks began to arrive, bringing lunch to the techies. Cody was waiting patiently in the car, sun was shining and warming up, so Cowboy brought him into the building. The techie said, “Don’t you dare pee.” I wasn’t sure who she was talking to, but I nodded.
Cowboy ended up buying an iPad or iPod, I’m not sure which. They discovered that I still owed $151.49 so I paid it. I still don’t know why Fraud Department talked to me and why I owed $151.49, but I’m back in their good graces. Total time to address the problem: 5 hours, 26 minutes.
So, now the story continues. Cowboy, who could be a techie himself, set up his brand-new iPad or iPod. He was happy and then he wasn’t. “I set it up, but my Facebook App doesn’t look right, and it says that I only have one friend.” I said, “So who’s your friend?” to which he answered, “I have no idea.”
Next time I get a bill from my phone carrier, I’m ditching the phone and going back to my soup can and string. It worked just fine.
