The past couple weeks have been ground zero for doing it wrong.
I wanted to put a travel alert on my bank account. I went to the branch and was told to wait for a banker. I talked to the banker and he seemed surprised like I was a fussy old lady and he was just indulging me. Then he thought I should open another bank account: just for travel. That way if something happens, I have an alternative.
I’m ahead of you pal, I have another account at a different bank. I also asked the banker specifically what the travel related fees would be and he agreed that there would be fees and that would be something to watch out for. Then he tried to sell me an American Express card to save on fees. I felt it was unlikely that travel related fees would be more than the annual fee for Am Ex.
Then after all that he told me I still had to call customer service.
Remember my rant about Verizon and how all they can do at the store is sell you stuff? Same at the bank. They can give you your very own cash that you earned yourself and they store for you or they can sell you stuff. They can’t do anything else. I called customer service and got into a phone tree where the only choices were to check my bank balance or get transferred to someone who could sell me something. I had to do that thing were you yell at the auto-attendant until she reluctantly transferred me to a person. I finally got that settled.
And speaking of Verizon, I needed to confer with them also about this travel. Phone tree that had no choices that I want. Yelling. Put into waiting queue and told they are experiencing extra long wait times. What does that mean? Unfortunately I didn’t have an extra long time right then. I decided to try the live chat (I know you’re shaking your head right now, desperate times … ). The interface was confusing but once I was connected it was kinda okay. At one point I was totally confused about what was going on and thought: I should call customer service so I can ask questions. Then I remembered that I was talking to customer service. I think this one is settled, too.
Finally, I ordered a specialty item from a store that only sells 2 things. In order to do this I was forced to create a user account, including a separate username other than my email address and it scolded my only moderately secure password. Like I need a really secure password for a place I’m never going to return to. I ordered both things. One magically arrived on my doorstep. Never got a shipping confirmation or anything. I figured the 2 items must have been separated in transit but several days later I still hadn’t received them so I went to the website and logged in. It didn’t need a username, just my email and moderately secure password. And next to my second item it said cancelled-back ordered. So I had to contact customer service which luckily was straight email and I also kindly suggested implementing a system to inform customers what the hell is going on with their order. I guess it’s not cancelled, just back ordered and they appreciated my suggestion. Just kidding! No one ever tells me they appreciate my suggestions.
I’m going to be offline for a couple of weeks. There will be tweets and photos.
