Under Seige, maybe a little bit
Last night I spent almost 45 minutes on the phone with our telephone company disputing an extra $50 that had appeared on our bill for no good reason. They reversed the charges but not without a lot of hassle from my end. This happens a lot, too often. At least half of our bills have extra charges that must be disputed, requiring a wade through the automated answering system and then a whole lot of time trying to reason with one of their representatives. I know the utility companies are about the dumbest kind of business there is and ours tops the list for bonehead policies, but I can’t quite believe all these mix-ups are accidental. There’s a very sneaky vibe going on here. I can’t help but wonder if they’re billing extra on purpose in hopes that customers either won’t notice because the bills are so infernally hard to read, or that they’ll just give up and pay it because they know trying to do anything about it is pure torture. The Chevron near our house has started listing only the price for the lowest grade of gas on their marquee. Instead of the next grade up being 10 cents more, as you would expect, it’s 12 cents more. Only you don’t learn this until you’ve actually gone to all the trouble of pulling up, getting out, and running your card. Sneaky? A little, I think. Nine months later we’re still going back and forth with the hospital and our insurance company over the coverage for Adam’s birth. It’s become this huge game of he said/she said and I’m the go between trying to get it all cleared up. Even after about 30 phone calls, I still have no idea why they can’t just talk to each other and why we can’t get this settled already. I spent almost an hour this morning running a scan and delete program to ferret out all the spyware and adware that various websites had installed on my hard drive without my knowledge. I don’t even want to know much time I spend every month making sure we’ve opted out of various marketing lists and filling out the correct forms and amendments to keep the companies we do business with from selling our information. These are little things but they add up and leave me wondering how much time I spend simply trying to make sure I’m not being cheated, taken advantage of, or exploited. Remember the days when you could be reasonably sure that even if the companies you patronize didn’t have your best interest at heart, at least they weren’t actively out to do you harm? *sigh*
One Response to “Under Seige, maybe a little bit”
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February 15th, 2008 at 6:14 am
I have noticed lately that it is almost impossible to talk to an actual person regarding a billing dispute. If you call the company on the phone, the automated system instructs you to go to their website, with no option for real live customer service. And if by some miracle you do get someone on the phone, they don’t speak English (US Airways, I’m talking to YOU!).