Thursday, October 30, 2003

Subject: Donuts on the center table

To: The whole department
From: Me

Dear Coworkers, A couple dozen donuts followed me into work this morning, please let's show them what happens when unprotected baked goods intrude upon our office. It is necessary that we band together so that these pastries can be "taken care of" before the end of the day as taking them home to my girlfriend would probably be looked at as being less than supportive of her diet. A word about the donuts: These are fat-free, sugar-free, chemical-free, nutrionally-sound, vitamin-supplemented, one-hundred-percent-organic donuts. Please disregard the Krispy Kreme box they came in. Yes, these are magic donuts, and within a week of eating them you will win the lottery or recieve some other finanical windfall in excess of six figures, and you won't even have to forward the donut to ten of your friends. Also as a result of eating one of these magic donuts, your mother-in-law will suddenly cancel her plan to spend the entire holiday season at your house, and, ten days from now, you will find a lucky penny on the sidewalk. You won't pick the penny up, because by then you'll be a f***ing millionaire, but you'll see it there, winking up at you from the cement. It's really too bad you won't pick it up, because the penny is magic as well and would have brought all the happiness and peace of mind that your newfound piles of cash will fail to provide. The magic penny would have been very handy in the months ahead when family, friends, and government are all lobbying for a piece of your fortune, causing you to retreat from the world and lose faith in humanity. But for now just keep your mind on the positive: Free donuts!!! Help yourself. Your luvin' coworker, Rob E.

It would have been fun to send out, but by the time I finished writing it, most of the donuts were gone.

posted 9:33 AM

Tuesday, October 28, 2003

Can you refund my lost time?

Actually you should refund it to my employer, but let's not go there.

I started to post this in Keely's comments because the whole thing reminded me of her own ISP customer service woes (part 1, part 2), but it was just too long, and it's been too long since I've updated anything here, so witness my battle with the mighty ISP. Of course I can only complain so much because it does seem like my problem was (probably) resolved after only one marathon chat session, whereas I don't know if Keely ever got a satisfactory outcome to her problem after several sessions. Enjoy:

Welcome, your chat session will begin shortly. 'Them' says: Thank you for contacting LiveChat, how may I help you today? me: I have a strange situation with my account. me: I have multiple e-mail addresses set up... Them: Ok. Please let me know your issue now. [That is what I'm doing, that is the function of the ellipsis and the reason your chat window now shows, "me is typing a message."] me: On one e-mail address I keep getting messages about my credit card being about to expire. me: There's a few confusing things about this: me: 1) My credit card is not about to expire. me: 2) that e-mail address is not the primary account e-mail address. me: 3) the e-mail references an account number which is not my account number. Them: Please paste the email you received in this chat window so that I can verify its validity. [I do so and there’s a LONG pause while it’s read.] Them: Ok. Please hold on while I pull your account details. [Another pause while they pull my account info, and, seemingly, pop off for lunch.] Them: I see that the account number on the email you have received is different from the one on your account. me: Yes, that was one of my questions. [Yet another pause while this “new” information is pondered.] Them: Thank you for holding. [This was not a prelude to more discussion, but just their way of letting me know that even though, while I had been waiting, my non-existent children had grown up and left the house, they had not forgotten me and would be getting back to me, eventually.] Them: Can I have the primary email password on your account, for account verification purposes? me: xxxxxxxxx Them: Thank you for providing account verification information. Them: I see that the credit card on your account is fine. me: Exactly.[I saw the same thing, and pointed that out when I first logged on.] Them: The card on your account does not expire for some time.[Hello? We've already gone there. Where were you?] me: And if the credit card was not fine, the e-mails should go to my primary account, not the other address, and should have my actual account number, right? Them: Yes, I see the invoice mistakenly reached you. me: So there is currently no problem with my account? me: And will I stop recieving e-mails about this other account? Them: From when are you receiving the invoices to your account? me: My monthly invoice comes to my primary e-mail address and always has. me: These other notices with the wrong account number have been coming for a month, pretty much since I set up the new e-mail address. me: I got one on 9/24, and one on 10/25. me: I set up that new e-mail account on or around 9/15 of this year. Them: Please hold on while I check the records of the other account. [I’m holding, but could this not have been step one? Did I not succinctly outline the problem a half an hour ago?] Them: I have checked the records. Please ignore the invoices you receive for the other account. me: Okay, will the invoices stop coming to my e-mail address?[i.e. Is there any chance that instead of having me ignore your mistake, you could just fix it instead?] Them: Yes. It will stop. me: Okay, thank you for your help. Them: You're welcome and thank you for using LiveChat. Should you need further assistance, please feel free to contact us again. Chat session has been terminated by the site operator. When you close the chat window a survey window will open. Please take a minute to fill in the survey and let us know how your chat session was.

See, problem solved, easy as pie, and taking only a little longer than it would have to bake a pie. Of course you should check back to this post in a month if you want to know if the misleading e-mails have actually stopped. Maybe I'll wait until then to track down and fill out the mysterious survey that never actually materialized at the end of our session. And of course I'm posting complaints about my ISP on the webspace provided by my ISP, so there's no telling if this post will last. Of course it's well established that this site is seldom visited by anyone, so the odds that it'll be perused by the customer service reps is slim. On the other hand, they must be doing something during the long pauses in our chat. It could be that they were entertaining themselves with my amusing web log entries, but they were probably reading Keely's post and looking for pointers...
posted 12:43 PM