Hard to Be Nice

I suppose that part of the problem is my aging. Still another part might be my impatience with others people and how they handle tasks. Whatever the cause, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to be nice.

My son Dallas called the other night and announced he’d received a refund check from AT&T in the amount of $424.97. His excitement was tempered with concern that the company might have erroneously billed his account. He’s made the payments but the bill has remained in my name, and as such, AT&T wouldn’t release any information about the account. He asked me to find out the status and let him know.

I began the process at 8:30 a.m. My naïveté led me to believe that by calling early I could beat the crowd. The first sound I hear after punching in the number was a recording. Oh, how I hate those things. It instructed me to punch #1 if I spoke English. The order set my ire on a low boil, but that’s a topic for another day. After a few more commands, I was placed on hold for “the next available representative.”

Soon enough, a person in customer service came on the line and asked how she could help. I explained to her that we’d received the check and wanted to make sure that no charges had been placed against our account. Then I told her we wanted to return the check if we weren’t entitled to it.

It were as if I’d thrown a chain across transformers and knocked out electric service to an entire section of the country. The woman had no idea what to do. She put me on hold for a couple of minutes and then came back to transfer me to someone else. For several minutes I waited, and when the line was answered, it was another CSR, and I had to repeat the same information. By then I was getting just a tad miffed.

I was placed on hold again and then summarily cut off. Spikes in my blood pressure caused my breathing to become momentarily erratic. Determined to get answers, I called again. Yes, I had to endure the same recorded messages and CSR contacts. Eventually, I was sent to another department that oversaw accounts. I again explained the reason for my call. The individual put me on hold again. By then the droning music that played was injecting a dull pain in my head.

As the folks at AT&T ran in circles and tried to catch their tails, I wondered aloud what I was doing. Here a company that was too big to be efficient was sending me a refund check for something about which I knew nothing and I was trying to send it back. I blame my parents for that. They taught my brothers and me to do the right thing, and most of my life I’ve attempted to do so. However, this corporation had made a mistake and when I tried to help, the turned what I call “snippety.” They were irritated that I’d asked them for help to correct their mistake.

Before long, another individual came on the line, and, you guessed it, I had to go over the story again. I was doing the same thing over and over and getting the same results. That process is called something. The person asked if she could put me on hold, and I lost it.

“Hey, I just want to make sure my account hasn’t been billed the amount of this check. Please let me know if that’s happened. Otherwise, I don’t care, and I’m over this.”

She came back with we don’t know what the refund is but that it was a refund from a checking account that ended in the numbers 4416. Now we were getting somewhere. Neither Dallas nor Amy and I have an account ending in those digits. What I surmised had happened was that some employee had credited our account with that payment and since service had been turned off, AT&T was trying to refund us the money.

The company had no idea to whom the money belonged. They instructed me to return the check via mail. Yep, I had to pay the postage to return their mistake. By the end of the event, I’d wasted more than 1 ½ hours, developed a thundering headache, lost my temper, and cursed the phone company. I did the right thing, but damn, it’s hard to be nice!