Friday, January 9, 2009

One Moment Please

You may recall that a few weeks ago I called my land line telephone folk and asked to pay less a month. I was thrilled when I discovered how easy it was to lower my bill.
Today I got my first bill since my monthly fee was lowered.
Today's bill was thirty dollars more than the amount I thought was too high. Huh? I called the phone company.
Okay. Let's not play games. I called AT&T, to be exact. That first task took at least half an hour. The number for AT&T might as well be unlisted. My first several conversations were with computers. Eventually I got to talk to a human.
Said I, "You guys lowered my bill by raising it thirty dollars."
"Oh, yeah," human said, "That always happens. People get real confused over that."
"I can understand their confusion," the reasonable part of my brain, having just won an arm wrestling contest with the reptilian part of my brain, stated.
"Yeah," said the human, "there's a surcharge for lowering your bill."
Reptiles win every time. I don't know why we bother keeping them leashed or caged. Still the struggle between the parts of my brain continued.
"What," I said as I put on a heavy coat. "You charged me to lower my bill?"
"Most people don't understand that," the human said.
"While it's fun being in the majority on at least this issue," I hissed through my cold blooded teeth, "I'd like to point out that this is absurd."
"It sure is," human said. "I've worked here a long time and it's never made sense to me and it never changes."
The reptile part of my brain sulked into cranial shadows. It's no fun being mean to someone who clearly as been a pawn in an unintelligible game.
"What can you do about this," I asked feeling all empathic and perplexed.
"I can ask them to lower your plan back to the previous price."
Empathy looked ready to run into its own cage.
"The one I used to have that I asked to be lowered because it cost too much."
"Yes."
"How much will that cost me?"
"I can see what the surcharge will be."
There was no more friendly tug or war between reasonable brain and reptilian brain.
Godzilla broke free and ate the reasonable part of my brain.
We both hung up on the phone company human.
Another victory for corporate America.
On the other hand, I did get to stomp a few cars during my lunch break.
Godzilla, of course, had already eaten his lunch.

2 comments:

Marnie said...

What a humorous blog. But, it's ever so true. I think the "humans" must be from India (that's where we outsource). A friend of mine called re her computer only to reach a "human" voice with a strong accent who couldn't understand what she was saying and likewise, she couldn't understand what the "human" was saying. It must be a ploy because my friend decided rather than fight the language barrier,she would forget returning the computer and bought another one.

Leslie said...

It reminds me of Lily Tomlin's character, Ernestine, , who used to say, "We don't care; we don't have to. We're the phone company."