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terryclothThis is long. I think it's fairly interesting/amusing, but YMMV, so I'll put it in a cut.
It turned out that the car did get fixed today, but I was on the toilet when the phone call came in telling me that I had ten minutes to call back if I wanted to get a shuttle back to the dealer. 11 minutes later, I came back and got the message, and frantically called the shuttle line, to no avail...
The web said that the dealer was open until 7pm, and that a bus heading from work to the dealer was leaving at 5:23 and 5:34... and then not again until around 6:30. It was 5:25, so it seemed like a good idea to hurry to the bus stop. I ran through the hallways, darted out a back exit, dashed across the street frogger style, and discovered that OH NO! I'd let my flexpass expire! I'd have to pay for the bus, and had no change!
So I started asking complete strangers for quarters, and eventually got enough just as the bus pulled up. It was the wrong bus. For me. It was the correct bus for everyone else, and they all got on and left.
Fifteen minutes later, the bus I was waiting for showed up. I flashed my expired flexpass and the driver didn't even look up.
It was about a four mile trip, which took 30 minutes. I played a lot of Golden Sun, and got off at the nearest exit to the dealer, and walked the rest of the way. Got there well before closing, and picked up my car. The bill came to $1300, more than half of it labor.
But at least the brakes worked, and I could put it out of my mind for a while.
Anyway, to celebrate the car being drivable again, I went out and got some hot pockets and Cold Stone at Crossroads. Cold Stone had a very long line, using ticket numbers. The people just in front of me were slow getting a number when the shop switched over, so I had 6 to their 9... but the employees couldn't keep the number up on the board in sync (there was some confusion over whether it should show the last person to be served, or the next person who'd be served when someone was available, and it didn't help that one group of people took one ticket for each member of the family even though they all ordered together), and ended up just serving random people anyway. I mixed up a horrible mess... banana and amaretto and strawberry... it ended up cancelling itself out and just tasting sweet. Sigh.
I got home to check e-mail, and saw 'Important Information About Your Microsoft Billing Account!'. My first thought was 'spam', but since I *do* use MSN to connect it got a second look. The second look revealed an attachment icon, so my second thought was 'virus spam'.
A closer look (you can 'view source' in outlook express without actually opening the message) showed it to be more or less legitimate (the attachment was a background image), so I opened it up and, as instructed, went to billing to verify that my account was correct, since they were vague about whether there was a *problem* or if this was just informational.
The *problem* was quickly apparent. They were still billing me for DSL. I hadn't noticed this earlier because (a) they bill automatically to my credit card, and (b) for six months they'd been forgetting to bill me at all. So, on balance, I was still ahead, even after two months at $49.99 for DSL I wasn't using and didn't even have a modem for anymore.
But the warning was that my dialup usage was exceeding the 10 hours per month that came free with DSL, and that I was going to start getting charged $1.50 an hour, so I rushed to the phone, winced at the warbling screech, ran back to disconnect from my dial-up, and then phoned customer service.
The first representative I talked to was a primitive robot masquerading as a dense, overly scripted human being. She had two annoying habits. The first was to abort and start over from the beginning of the scripted paragraph if I asked a question or, in fact, made any noise at all, even something as simple as 'okay'. The second was to pause after every three numbers whenever she read one off (and she read off two, the phone number that I'd JUST CALLED and a ticket number) but then start again while I was in the middle of repeating it back to her.
Me: "Okay, I've got a pen now. What's the number?"
Her: "I'm going to give you a ticket number now, which you can give to other representatives so that they can access the information you've already given us on this issue. Do you have a pen handy? The number is: 123..."
Me: "12--"
Her: "--03"
Me: "3... what was that?"
Her: "465. Did you get that?"
But she couldn't change my account back to a dialup, apparently to make general modifications to your account you need to contact 'account cancellations' instead of 'general billing'. After ten minutes on hold, I got to talk to someone who could actually help, and in 5 minutes he solved the problem, and said that I'd get a credit for the overbilling. But, oh wait! There was a problem! Could I hold?
He never asked for the ticket number, by the way. It was sent to him automatically.
After fifteen minutes on hold, he said he still couldn't get in touch with the people he needed to solve the problem, and that I'd need to hold some more. After another fifteen minutes he explained that he'd already fixed the account, but that there was some problem with the credit, and he gave me another ticket number. And could I hold again?
I sat there wondering why, exactly, I was on hold, since they already knew what they were going to do and didn't really need my input. Were they going to make me give them an address to send a rebate check to or something?
After ten minutes the mystery was solved: They did not, in fact, need me for anything, they'd just kept me on hold for 40 minutes so I wouldn't have to worry about whether or not the credit went through.
They never asked for the second ticket number either. v.v
Now all I want is for nothing bad or unexpected to happen for the next six months. x.x
It turned out that the car did get fixed today, but I was on the toilet when the phone call came in telling me that I had ten minutes to call back if I wanted to get a shuttle back to the dealer. 11 minutes later, I came back and got the message, and frantically called the shuttle line, to no avail...
The web said that the dealer was open until 7pm, and that a bus heading from work to the dealer was leaving at 5:23 and 5:34... and then not again until around 6:30. It was 5:25, so it seemed like a good idea to hurry to the bus stop. I ran through the hallways, darted out a back exit, dashed across the street frogger style, and discovered that OH NO! I'd let my flexpass expire! I'd have to pay for the bus, and had no change!
So I started asking complete strangers for quarters, and eventually got enough just as the bus pulled up. It was the wrong bus. For me. It was the correct bus for everyone else, and they all got on and left.
Fifteen minutes later, the bus I was waiting for showed up. I flashed my expired flexpass and the driver didn't even look up.
It was about a four mile trip, which took 30 minutes. I played a lot of Golden Sun, and got off at the nearest exit to the dealer, and walked the rest of the way. Got there well before closing, and picked up my car. The bill came to $1300, more than half of it labor.
But at least the brakes worked, and I could put it out of my mind for a while.
Anyway, to celebrate the car being drivable again, I went out and got some hot pockets and Cold Stone at Crossroads. Cold Stone had a very long line, using ticket numbers. The people just in front of me were slow getting a number when the shop switched over, so I had 6 to their 9... but the employees couldn't keep the number up on the board in sync (there was some confusion over whether it should show the last person to be served, or the next person who'd be served when someone was available, and it didn't help that one group of people took one ticket for each member of the family even though they all ordered together), and ended up just serving random people anyway. I mixed up a horrible mess... banana and amaretto and strawberry... it ended up cancelling itself out and just tasting sweet. Sigh.
I got home to check e-mail, and saw 'Important Information About Your Microsoft Billing Account!'. My first thought was 'spam', but since I *do* use MSN to connect it got a second look. The second look revealed an attachment icon, so my second thought was 'virus spam'.
A closer look (you can 'view source' in outlook express without actually opening the message) showed it to be more or less legitimate (the attachment was a background image), so I opened it up and, as instructed, went to billing to verify that my account was correct, since they were vague about whether there was a *problem* or if this was just informational.
The *problem* was quickly apparent. They were still billing me for DSL. I hadn't noticed this earlier because (a) they bill automatically to my credit card, and (b) for six months they'd been forgetting to bill me at all. So, on balance, I was still ahead, even after two months at $49.99 for DSL I wasn't using and didn't even have a modem for anymore.
But the warning was that my dialup usage was exceeding the 10 hours per month that came free with DSL, and that I was going to start getting charged $1.50 an hour, so I rushed to the phone, winced at the warbling screech, ran back to disconnect from my dial-up, and then phoned customer service.
The first representative I talked to was a primitive robot masquerading as a dense, overly scripted human being. She had two annoying habits. The first was to abort and start over from the beginning of the scripted paragraph if I asked a question or, in fact, made any noise at all, even something as simple as 'okay'. The second was to pause after every three numbers whenever she read one off (and she read off two, the phone number that I'd JUST CALLED and a ticket number) but then start again while I was in the middle of repeating it back to her.
Me: "Okay, I've got a pen now. What's the number?"
Her: "I'm going to give you a ticket number now, which you can give to other representatives so that they can access the information you've already given us on this issue. Do you have a pen handy? The number is: 123..."
Me: "12--"
Her: "--03"
Me: "3... what was that?"
Her: "465. Did you get that?"
But she couldn't change my account back to a dialup, apparently to make general modifications to your account you need to contact 'account cancellations' instead of 'general billing'. After ten minutes on hold, I got to talk to someone who could actually help, and in 5 minutes he solved the problem, and said that I'd get a credit for the overbilling. But, oh wait! There was a problem! Could I hold?
He never asked for the ticket number, by the way. It was sent to him automatically.
After fifteen minutes on hold, he said he still couldn't get in touch with the people he needed to solve the problem, and that I'd need to hold some more. After another fifteen minutes he explained that he'd already fixed the account, but that there was some problem with the credit, and he gave me another ticket number. And could I hold again?
I sat there wondering why, exactly, I was on hold, since they already knew what they were going to do and didn't really need my input. Were they going to make me give them an address to send a rebate check to or something?
After ten minutes the mystery was solved: They did not, in fact, need me for anything, they'd just kept me on hold for 40 minutes so I wouldn't have to worry about whether or not the credit went through.
They never asked for the second ticket number either. v.v
Now all I want is for nothing bad or unexpected to happen for the next six months. x.x
