Dear Kid,

Wonderful having you home this weekend. Hope you had an easy trip back to school.

Or at least I hope it wasn’t as exciting as the NFL games this weekend. Cray-zee.

Since I have great faith that other people will be writing about football, I will graciously allow them that privilege and move on to the Topic of The Day. Which is

Talking to the phone people.

Our chat started out nicely enough.

Thank you for contacting the Verizon Wireless Chat Team. One of our skilled Chat Representatives will be with you in a moment.

You are not currently in a chat session.

All Chat Representatives are currently assisting other customers. Thank you for your patience.

All Chat Representatives are currently assisting other customers. Thank you for your patience.

All Chat Representatives are currently assisting other customers. Thank you for your patience.

Eventually, Kimothy came on the line.

Kimothy? Really?

Kimothy: Welcome to Verizon Wireless!  I am located in TEXAS! We are known for our BBQ, hot weather, and friendly smiles.  May I ask with whom do I have the pleasure of speaking with today?

Regardless of who Kimothy really is (ha!) or where he/she is located (pretty sure “Texas” means Jupiter), I explained the question about our cell phone catch.

Kimothy:  I am checking into this for you now, thank you for your patience.

(pause)
Visitor: hello?
Kimothy: I am still here my apologies my system froze and booted me out so I had to bring your account back up.
Visitor: dang technology…
Kimothy: Yes I thought it was supposed to make things better.
Kimothy: Allow me just a few to bring your billing statements back up please.

(pause)
Visitor: did you find the statements?

Kimothy moved with lightning speed (and by “with lightning speed” I mean crafted two handmade afghans and made shortbread cookies). Kimothy’s answers comments were not enlightening.

Visitor: what does that have to do with a line charge spike?

(pause)
Kimothy: There wasn’t a line charge spike you were receiving a $xx.00 line access discount for your devices that you are making monthly installments on
Visitor: why wouldn’t we get a discount that month?

(pause)
Kimothy: I am showing that you were getting the line access discount on all of those lines that you are paying monthly on
Visitor: so why would we see a spike that month? I’m confused

(pause)
Kimothy: The discounts starts at the time the device is placed on the the device payment option, the xxxxxxxx line was did not start until 0x/xx/2015 , which between March and April that line was not getting the line access discount  as the other 3
Visitor: What? All but one line started at the same time. and all the lines showed a spike that month. why didn’t we get the discount march/april?

You’ve probably guessed that the conversation was slooooow. And by “slow” I mean we had watched the entire Colts/Patriots pregame and first half by this point in the conversation.

Kimothy went on to explain that my statement showed the discount. I went on to copy the online statement to show it didn’t. Indianapolis went on to show they know how to play football. The Puppy went on napping.

Kimothy decided to ignore me as well as the little box on the site that says “You can expect best-in-class service from us anywhere: online, on the phone, or in-store.” Kimothy apparently did not have much in the way of a challenging class.

Do you know how long Sunday night NFL halftime is?

Long enough to write a blog, have a snack, listen to the Puppy object to going for a walk and being put to bed, and for me to decide that Kimothy does not have the top Customer Service Ranking at Verizon and that Verizon doesn’t have the most user-friendly technology set up for its customer service reps.

Visitor: you seem to be suggesting something was different in just that one month.
Kimothy: Let me go ahead and compare the charges, for each line, from the bill that generated on x/xx/2015 to this bill, generated x/xx/2015. Just a moment please as I am going to have to swap between the bills and do not have the ability to have them up side by side.

As the Wonderful Gloria put it, why should it be so difficult for reasonably intelligent people buy appliances and get simple answers to questions? (I should probably mention that Gloria is WAY Above Average Intelligence.)

FACT: No one should have to decipher phone bills in the same weekend they purchase a Major Appliance.

Sometime near the end of the third quarter, Kimothy and I had this exchange:

Kimothy: Before I proceed to the most recent bill, did you have any questions in regards to the one that generated on x/xx/2015?
Visitor: So as far as I can see, you’re telling me the increase was b/c xxxxxxx. is that correct?
Kimothy: That is correct.
Visitor: and it has taken you this long to explain that to me…
Kimothy: I do understand that this chat has taken some time and I do apologize for the misunderstanding. I did not not realize you had not see those fees on the bill and were just referring the line charge, itself.
Kimothy: **misunderstand and inconvenience.** (What does that mean?)

Twelve seconds later:

Kimothy: I have not heard from you for a few moments.  Would you like me to keep this chat session open for you?
Visitor: Speechless, Kimothy, absolutely speechless.
Kimothy: I am glad that we were able to figure this out together.  
Visitor: Thanks for your help
Kimothy: You are  most welcome!

The conversation was infinitely longer, but not quite as bizarre as the Colt screw up line up at the end of the third quarter.

Sweetie, if you are going to take classes in a foreign language, I would suggest you take up “Customer Service” since that will probably be more useful to you than any other language I can think of.

Love, Mom

Dear Kid,

Customer Service can be wonderful, easy, and painless.

Last night, it was none of those things.

I was locked out of a website that I needed to get into. After trying several different magical incantations, I gave up and called Customer Service. Since the Help Desk was going to be open for another 30 minutes or so, I thought things would go smoothly.

The first automated message really, really, really wanted me to fill out a ticket on the website. Yep, the same website that I wasn’t able to get to. I declined the invitation.

The automated system punished me by playing music. Not just bad music (that was predictable), and not just music interrupted every 47 seconds by a message (I’ll get to that in a minute), but music of varying volume. In the space of 6 seconds it would go from regular volume to undetectable by human ears, making me wonder if a) I’d been cut off, b) I was in spot with bad reception (even though I hadn’t moved), or c) if I was being transferred to a Helpful Person. I, of course, immediately assumed that a real person would answer the phone during one of these sound deficits and I would have no idea, the person would then hang up on me, and I’d have to call in again. Which would be awful. Especially because the help desk was only going to be open another 23 minutes.

The message which I heard more times than seems reasonable: “Thank you for your patience. Please try using our knowledge library by logging onto www.ourwebsite.com. We look forward to helping you.”

This was clearly a bunch of hooey. Not only do I not have patience in this sort of situation, they clearly didn’t look forward to helping me. 13 minutes until the help desk closes.

Since a few thousand polite invitations to use the website didn’t work, the automated system switched tactics. The music changed from Bad 1980s Music (Designed to Soothe) to What My Least Favorite 3-Year-Old Niece Recorded Over the Weekend (Designed to Annoy). Where the first batch failed to reach its goal, the second succeeded brilliantly.

I was, indeed, annoyed. 7 minutes left.

(And I thought I didn’t have a blog topic. Ha!)

Did I mention the crick in my neck from doing the ear-shoulder-phone-hold so that I could document the process (and by “document the process” I mean “type”)? I was

With EXACTLY 42 seconds until the help desk hours were over, “Adam” answered the call. I’m pretty sure that’s not his real name since he stumbled over it. I’m also pretty sure that “Adam” and his friends were all sitting around waiting until the last possible second to take the remaining calls for the day. (Seriously, who waits on hold for 33 minutes and 18 seconds these days? Yes, I looked. I had to know.)

I explained my problem to “Adam.” He punched a few buttons. No change. He punched a few more buttons. All fixed.

Very glad to have it all fixed. Very un-glad to have the worst “hold” experience on three continents. (I actually wrote that on the survey they promptly sent me.)

Hope no one keeps you waiting today.

Love, Mom