so yesterday, in an effort to save the social-security-signing-up-for-medicare office some time, i tried to cancel an appointment with them. i had already accomplished what i needed online and i wanted them to be able to satisfy another customer’s needs.
i looked all over on their site for a way to cancel this appointment. nothing. nowhere to cancel.
but on the letter (which i received in real life as well as online) there was a phone number.
thinking that there would be an “option” to choose to cancel appointments, i dialed up.
nope. no option for canceling.
just an option for appointments.
“one hour and fifty minutes,” the pleasantly-recorded bad news said.
i started to stay on hold. put my phone on speaker and laid it next to me.
but i have other things to do. and an hour and fifty minutes to sit on hold in an effort to cancel a phone appointment with them is a tad bit – well – ridiculous. i was just trying to be nice, responsible, aware…you know, all those adjectives about being a good customer, a good citizen, a good fellow-almost-medicare person who knows that other people have questions too and these departments are overrun and that it took me two full months to get this appointment and i would like someone else to be the happy recipient of it.
whatever.
i hung up.
today, when they call, i’ll suggest that they find a way to make it easier to cancel an appointment.
because – doggonit – i’m almost 65 and my time is worth something too.
i suppose cartoons are supposed to be mostly funny, though sardonic probably fits the bill too. this might be funny if it weren’t true.
a friend of mine texted a couple days ago to tell me she had bought a peach. one peach. it was $1.02 and it was not even ripe yet.
we bought our favorite jam at the least expensive grocery store. bonne maman mixed berry. it was $5.99.
one 28 ounce can of hunts crushed tomatoes is now $2.49. a minute ago it was $1.49.
20 said the vine-ripe tomato was $3.00. for one.
the guy at the meat counter picked up a steak. he looked at us and sighed, “how did this get so expensive?”. the little boy with him pushed closer to us and piped up, “have you heard of inflation?”
our gas and electric bill is on the budget plan. we are ridiculously frugal. we are cold in the winter and hot in the summer. it is $326/month.
our internet/cable/phone bill was $213 and seemed to be continually rising. in an attempt to pare down, i spent what seemed like half my life last week on the phone with them. it is nearly impossible to lower costs with this company. i have had their service the entire time i have lived in this house. 34 years.
were i to be a new customer, customer service said there would be many options from which i could choose. but – as a three-plus-decade customer – there are not. i can eliminate all my channels but 15 and save about $10. and what about my loyalty??
they transferred me to the retention department. i wonder why.
quiet guitar, a little flute, an oboe line weaving in and out.
i know – without a doubt – that they are trying to keep me calm while on hold. having just gotten off the phone with a billing department, it is not a far reach for me to imagine one falling fast asleep during this interminable period of time. the age of technology and customer service have taken a turn to the worse if they are programming music specifically to slow down our rapidly-beating hearts and blood pressure when we call.
from a personal standpoint, were i to be accessing this music – this particular track – through a mindful practice app or a guided imagery site, it would be pretty helpful. but the use of background music on loop – a composer’s nightmare – to soothe my billingbrain is trying.
and then there was this moment i had on hold one day when i called an insurance company. paperwork strewn in front of me, pencil and notebook at the ready, a list of questions in my head, i was ready to take them on. i was instantly put on hold the moment i selected “speak to a representative”.
the music started.
mine.
piano, strings, a cello line weaving in and out…
it did take my mind off the insurance debacle.
instead, i just kept wondering if they were paying royalties.
it’s exactly how i draw horses. back in the day i had a book that taught me how to draw them. i was horse-crazy and i studied this book and practiced over and over. i did not retain much of all that study – or all of the other books i read about horses – but i can still draw a horsehead. so when we flew over this island on our approach to the tampa airport, i was astounded to see the first vestiges of my own drawing. i named it van gogh horse – for obvious reasons. high tide and angle and an active imagination helped, but i sure do think it looks like a horse.
it had been three and a half years since i had flown. we’ve read many articles about aggressive passengers and, i must admit, that doesn’t sound too enticing. i can’t imagine being rude to people who are tending to your needs as you zoom through the sky. not to mention all that recirculated air and the folks in the seat behind us hack-coughing. ahem. so it was a little nerve-wracking.
but it was also magical. you forget. i spent a lot of time looking out the window, mesmerized by the cloud formations and the landscape below, checking the flight plan on my phone to see where we were (technology is pretty amazing!) and taking photographs. i looked – i am sure – like the quintessential tourist-on-the-airplane. but i didn’t care. we have driven everywhere in the last years so it was like a small miracle to jaunt from milwaukee to tampa in two hours and forty minutes.
i remember days i flew often. midwest express airlines and real plates and real silverware and gourmet meals and mimosas in the morning or wine in the afternoon. and, the pièce de résistance…warm chocolate chip cookies. it was an experience – a whole experience. i flew midwest as often as i could, flights to los angeles and nashville and south and out east.
the most memorable experience was the – only – one time the airline lost my luggage. i had concerts and appearances in boston and all my attire was in my suitcase. a midwest express representative – jimbo – who is still my friend on facebook – immediately set to helping me, told me to go buy some necessities, including concert attire, and send midwest the bill. i am mostly a jeans-wearing performer – though there were some exceptions that particular trip – so that kept the costs down a bit, but they covered every last thing i needed. customer service at its best. i called all those items “my midwest express collection” and flew midwest loyally until the airline was no longer.
in a memory-filled moment with the smell of baking chocolate chips in my mind’s eye, i googled the milwaukee-based airline and was jazzed to see it is hoping to make a comeback one of these days. i wish them well. here is the best news:
“the airline plans to bring back the cookies if it starts flying again.” (milwaukeemag.com)
i know that can take some time and some luck. but warm chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the airline’s tiny kitchen could encourage me to start flying more again. i mean, people can’t be ornery with cookies.
if i had to draw an airplane experience – even though i am clearly not gifted at drawing – i would draw people in cushy two-across-seats, trays down, real plates and silverware, coffee cups and mimosas, warm chocolate chip cookies, linen napkins. smiles and horses out the window.
there is really nothing unhappy about polka dots. it is rare that polka dots are scorned, even more rare that polka dots are looked upon as harbingers of negativity. polka dots get a bye in the fashion world, seemingly always advancing to the next round.
yesterday we spent about five hours on the phone with spectrum trying to fix our internet. we unplugged our two-in-one modem-router combo, drove to the store, exchanged our equipment and tried to self-install (underscored in its excitement rating) and then spent another hour on the phone. it was never fixed and we are hopeful for today, as a tech person will come and “evaluate the problem”. we were ridiculously weary with internet-failure by the end of the day and solaced ourselves with a favorite holiday dvd movie snuggled around the laptop under the covers before sleep.
our dear friends texted us a youtube of a spectrum skit on SNL that we could watch on our phone. it was hilariously accurate and made us laugh. we had literally spoken to an insane number of reps during this tech-debacle. chris was one of them.
i liked him immediately. he promised me a ferrari and a pizza as well as finding us a “package” to fix our internet grief. i told him to keep the pizza and he thanked me profusely because, on a diet sans pizza, he has been craving it and did not want to think of me, his newest friend, eating pizza. i told him to maybe have a piece of pizza, that life is too short. it’s not good to crave things and deny yourself everything. anyway, after our philosophical discussion, he again said that he would find a plan and he would fix our internet once and for all. he was basing our success on “my demeanor and clothing choices”. my ripped jeans and moccasin boots railed in protest but recognized we weren’t on a video call, after all, and gave up the fight. it sounded like clothing really mattered to him and so i’m imagining that he had a dark blue gingham-checked shirt and jeans with a solid dark-blue skinny-but-not-too-skinny-to-be-out-of-sync-with-his-body tie and very cool rich medium brown tie shoes, since brown shoes seem to be really vogue with blue these days. though chris was delightful to deal with – since it could have been different and dry and kind of like having a tooth filled at the dentist so I was relieved to be laughing and joking – chris did not fix our internet. neither did any of the other reps, all nice and scripty polka-dot-ish, but unable to address the problem.
so, no ferrari, no pizza AND no internet.
we are determined, after last night’s movie made us predictably mushy, that today will be a polka-dot kind of day.
we mantra: the tech will come – dressed in spectrum attire – and voila! fix the internet. we will suddenly go from 30mbps (an old time warner cable plan no one told us to upgrade) to ultra wifi 400mbps (I will believe this when I see it). we will have no issues with brand new equipment we just brought home. we will easily engage wifi on all our devices. we will carry on, having woefully lost a whole day in spectrumland, but rapidly recuperating back into reality.
we will be in polka-dot happiness with real polka-dots.
so, one of my least favorite things is calling customer service. of any company. insurance companies, airlines, stores, online retail, the cellphone company, and the worst-the cable company.
one day recently i literally called time warner cable to inquire about a less expensive plan. of course, the company has been acquired by spectrum, so i was talking to the spectrum folks. but, at the time, my bill still had “time warner cable” on it, so i figured that they were still somehow in the game.
i explained to the gal on the line what i was looking for, the reason for my call. this was misunderstood time after time, until i just blurted out “i want a cheaper plan!” she then proceeded to tell me that she would research that for me. holdholdholdholdholdholdhold……
she came back on the line to tell me -excitedly- that she was able to find a fabulous new spectrum plan for me and that i could sign up right away, over the phone. here’s the thing (the moment i was hit by the customer-taser): the new plan was $35 a month MORE than the one i already had and about which i was calling to negotiate. what?!?!?! i asked her if she understood what she had just told me. she (again, excitedly) said she did and that she could sign me up right away.
i told her i didn’t want to talk on the phone with her anymore. 45 minutes of wasted life. a taser would have been more honest.
reverse threading 