Verizon

I love talking to verizon and ‘communications’ companies in general. Get that, a "Communications" company. ha.
- I talk to the internet people: I made changes to the account, I need to clarify billing. They say, “great we’ll get it done. We’ll make the change, but you need to talk to the phone people before it’s all final.”
- Ok. I talk to the people, they say, “ok, makes sense, but you need to talk to the financial people.”
- Ok. I talk to the financial people. They say, “fine, but you need to talk to the internet people.”
- I say, “I already talked to the internet people.”
- They say, “hmmm, yeah, well you need to talk to the internet people and tell them to talk to the financial people.”
- I say, “you are the financial people.”
- “Yes, but we’re not the internet people, so we can’t make the change until we talk to the internet people.”
- “Yes, but if I talked to the internet people and they told me to talk to the phone people who told me to talk to financial people, then why can’t you just talk to the internet people now, or just make the change final.”
- “Well, we have different software.”
- I can say nothing. So I wait.
- “And it sometimes takes 2 billing cycles to update a change.”
- “But the bill is theoretically due next week.”
- “Well you definitely should follow up.”
- “That’s what I’m doing.”
- “You should just have the internet people finalize everything.”
- “That’s was the goal of my phone call to them. They told me to talk to the phone people who told me to talk to you.”
- “Well, just have them come talk to us.”
- “Ok… so…I guess I need to clarify things: why do I, the customer, have to be the instrument through which the employees talk to each other, especially since a) you can’t do anything based on what I tell you (or you’d make it final right now), and b) it takes me 20 minutes of muzak each time I need to transfer. Why can’t you just talk to them or pass the information along?”
- “Well…how about I call over there with you right now?”
- “Fine.” And then they begin calling over there. I can hear a few rings while we both wait on the line. Then:
- “The number you have reached is not in service… The number you have reached is not in service…The number you have reached is not in service…”
- “Hello? Hello? Financial people? Are you still there?
- Nope. Guess I’ll call back tomorrow.
(As you probably guessed from your own experiences, multiple iterations of this conversation were omitted in my retelling. Each line of the conversation was repeated two or three times before moving to the next hard return.)
- Was this the first rant this blog has seen?