Consumer Nirvana Where Are You?

Leah told me that I needed to post to our blog because she really wasn't feeling up to it. Then she posted the picture of Claire, but I'm going to make a post anyway. In fact part of my post will even be news to Leah.

So many of you know that my journey to "consumer nirvana" has been a long and bumpy road. From pubes in my rice to gum in my fries, it would seem that I've had a more difficult struggle to reach my consumertopia than most. This past month has been no different. A while back Leah decided to apply for a new credit card. She was to receive two great features on the card - sky miles and 0% interest. What's not to like. We recently decided that it was ridiculous that she had the only card on the account and that I would have to pretend to be Leah anytime I used the card when she wasn't there - I'm sure you can imagine I don't look good in Leah's skirts! So she called and ordered a card for me. The new card came in the mail a few days later. However, when we opened the envelope, the new card had Leah's name on it. So, Leah called back and asked them to send a new card with my name on it. The customer service agent apologized profusely and assured us that he would correct the problem. Sure enough, a new card came with a new name. The problem was that the name on the card was not my name. The good news is that if anyone knows a "Ceb" Fish, I have his card. Now I've been repeating my name for some 25 years, so I decided to make the call to correct the problem. However, the kind, foreign customer service agent informed me that despite the fact that the name on my card was spelled incorrectly, only the primary account holder was authorized to make changes to my card. I explained that Leah was my wife and that it was my card all to no avail. I told him that Leah would call, but that I wanted him to make an "account notation" that the spelling was incorrect and I then spent a fantastic five minutes explaining to this non-native speaker the wonders of the English alphabet.

Let's take a brief pause here for a moment to clarify something. I am not a racist, nor do I discriminate on the basis of ethnicity. If I were an employer I would most definitely be equal opportunity. However, I loathe the business concept of saving money on customer service by outsourcing call centers to countries whose native language is not English. And now the story continues...

Later that night Leah made a second phone call, and had the privilege of experiencing the same conversation I had just had, despite the existence of the "account notation." After another string of insincere apologies, and some further "account notations," Leah was assured that the problem would be corrected. Well, the card came in the mail yesterday, and good news, if you know "Ceb" Fish, I now have two cards for him!

I'm just now realizing that this post was really long. Initially I had planned to relate two stories, but time and space restraints are compelling me to reevaluate. Here's what I'm going to do, if I see a sufficient number of comments to this post I'll go ahead and tell my second story. However, this sufficiency test is a subjective test, and we all know how shady those subjective tests can be (that's for you Steph). If the comments are sparse, I'll conclude that no one wants to read my consumer rantings and turn the stage back over to Leah and pretty pictures of our children.