Both of my credit cards expire at the start of August. The new ones finally arrived and thus begins the activation sequence and updating billing info.
A necessary evil since I choose to have CCs...since I choose to use them for some of my automatic billing. yes it gets paid off immediately. Balance free since 2009 baby!!
So to activate them there was an online feature for that. Slick. Usually you have to call. Except the webpage kept freezing and then it got grumpy saying I had too many wrong answers. So I had to call.
I was on hold with BMO FOR 47 minutes before I got to the poorly named 'customer service'.
I then had to go through a lengthy process of proving who I was. This included a series of 'So what was your last purchase and how much...ok and then before that, how much, and then before that'. I had to log in to my account to get the exact dollars and cents. Finally my MC was activated.
Then I consulted my list of preauthorized transactions to set about changing that info so that the billing cycle was not interrupted.
Netflix was easy. Log in, change info and boom. done
Next was my landline and cell phone provider (same company). Again I got to sit on hold forever until I got a lady who was doing her 'first time' change of info. I told her I had two cell phones and a landline to update info. After I gave her my info for my cell and we did the 'prove who you are' dance, apparently she closed all the windows so then to do my landline, we had to do the verification all over again. awesome.
The last one I did was my satellite provider. On hold again. The man answering ...... asked a lot of really stupid questions. We did the verification dance. Then he asked why I wanted to change my billing info. I said that my CC expired and I needed to provide the new info on it. Why would you want to do that??? he asked. I blinked. Seriously? says jolie.... because as of August my number is no longer valid and I would like to continue service. You should have done this online, he says. I point out the spot online where it says 'to update your credit card info you must call...' No gold star for him.
So let's tally up the time:
Online activation attempt time - 20 minutes
BMO on hold - 47 minutes
BMO verification process - 11 minutes
Netflix - 2 minutes
Phones on hold 37 minutes
Phones verification - 16 minutes
Satellite on hold 32 minutes
Satellite verification 9 minutes.
total time invested ... 2 hours 54 minutes
That's a lot of time.
Tuesday, Nice weekend!
1 day ago
6 comments:
ARen't you glad they don't expire at the beginning of September!!! Sheesh, what a lot of wasted time!
I wish we could bill them. My daughter and I were talking about efficiency and how with learning robots efficiency is not always the best way, but these companies need to learn a little bit about efficiency! Done for 3-4 years now!
Unbelievable!! There is *NOTHING* I hate more than people wasting my time... grrr!!!
Ugh! :P
The worst! I lost my credit card last year and had to go through the whole process of changing all my bill payments and it also took forever. Even then I was paranoid I would miss something because I did have a few weird payments that only came out annually or quarterly. I was happy they at least extended the expiry date another five years instead of just keeping it the same as the card I lost!
I am glad to know I am not the only one who gets annoyed by this. Def glad they don't expire once school is in session. No time for that kind of holding then.
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