A Great Start

I'm spending my entire lunch hour on hold.

Today is the first Monday of 2004 and already things are totally screwed up. Just before Christmas, I decided to upgrade my cell phone online. Believe it or not, it was cheaper to get a new phone (free) than to buy a new battery. Gotta love capitalism! Amazingly and to my great satisfaction, the phone was delivered within a few days after Christmas. Fast forward to today, in which a duplicate shipment of the same phone was sent to me.

Normally, I wouldn't complain about more free stuff, but I was aware that what happens when I upgrade is that my account is charged for the phone until I take care of all the contract signing junk and activate it, at which time the account is credited. Logically, that would mean that I would probably be charged for this duplicate phone since I would not be activating it. Therefore, I would need to have it sent back and the account corrected.

So I set out to call Cingular's "customer service" at lunch time to explain that I need to send back a duplicate shipment and have everything corrected. As luck would have it, the first agent I talked with was the "snippy bitch from hell." Annoyed by the fact that I had to call and make her work, she pins the whole problem on us, saying that we shouldn't have accepted the shipment from Fed Ex in the first place. She must think I have the technology to see into the unmarked box and determine that the contents were a second phone and not some additional hardware that they decided I might need. Last time I checked, Tom Ridge was still working on that one.

I'd like to say that was the worst of it, but then I had to deal with numerous transfers, disconnects, and people who just didn't seem to know what's going on. Finally, after approximately 1.5 hours, I got transferred to someone who seemed legitimately helpful in the sales department.

That's right. One and a half hours. I started this journey around 11:30 and I finally talked with a helpful person close to 1:00. Not like I didn't have anything else to do.

So the helpful agent takes a look at my account to see what's happening and sees something surprising. Apparently, there is no record of a second phone being sent out to me. But yet, I have one. Suddenly realizing that he just gave me a reason to not have to return it, he backtracks and states that he doesn't have complete access to my accounts and orders. He continues on to say that the people in the internet order department could dig into that a little deeper. Frankly, I find it hard to believe that any salesperson wouldn't be able to see all the records that involve transactions...but then again, how many of the people I talked to just to get to this guy knew what was going on in their company?

Regardless, this guy does demonstrate that he understands the term customer service and makes sure I get to talk to the people that handle internet sales. He successfully transfers me to them, and I repeat the explanation to their agents. They proceed to look up my account and the obvious pause and mutterings of “that’s weird” tell me that they’ve just seen the exact same thing the last agent did. Confused, they put me on hold while they check out the situation. After a short wait (then again, 30 minutes would have been a short wait compared to what I had to endure), the new agent quickly told me that they were going to send out a return slip for me to send the hardware back and concluded the call.

So here I am, realizing that the last 90 minutes of my life were wasted because I wanted to do the right thing and return a second free phone when I didn’t really need to. Anyone want a new phone?