Queen of Rambles

Picture it. It’s late Saturday morning in the happy P@lsson home. Happy Saturday morning activities have left me in a state of dizzy confuddlement. The blankets are a nice, warm haven on a cold, windy day. Life is good. I’m considering time travelling back to 1995 so I can inform my 20 year old self to stop despairing–life only gets better and better.

Then the phone rings. Mike answers and shoves it into my half-awake hands.

Me, groggily: Hello.

Perky Woman: Hi Carrie! Can you believe all the snow we’re getting today? Of course, it can’t be like anything you experienced when you were living in Sweden, but it’s still not good!

Me, thinking that the voice on the other end of the line really doesn’t sound a thing like Tora, especially since I didn’t realize our friendship had quite evolved to the “friendly weather calls” just yet: Uhhh. . .yeah. Sweden. . uh. . cold.

PW: That must have been such an adventure! Did you like it over there?

Me, thinking “what the hell?” but not wanting to offend Tora, for who else do I know in the DC area?: Well, yeah. . it was an adventure.

PW: I was just talking to your mom about it and she made it sound like you hated it!

Me, kind of waking up. Tora was talking to my mom? What the hell doesn’t seem strong enough to express what I was thinking: Who is this?

PW: This is Shari, from Discover!

Me, still confused and wondering why a telemarketer is so damned perky: I don’t need any more credit cards.

PW: Oh, no, no. You already have a Discover card! I just want to talk about your account.

Me: Uhhh. . I cut that one up years ago. I don’t want to renew or reactivate it. We try to live credit card free.

PW: Oh dear! I was afraid of that. But I’m showing a charge of $99.99 in September and with late fees and service charges, you have an outstanding balance of $214.00. Do you want to pay with your checking account right now?

Me, WIDE AWAKE: What? NO! I don’t have that card. There can’t be a charge. What’s it from?

PW: AOL Traveller’s Advantage.

Cue the thudding music.

After a bit of haggling and finagling I got the number for AOHell and my account number. I had vague memories of them calling me years and years ago and me giving into the pressure of this thing with the intent of cancelling it immediately. But that was years and years ago. My mom took care of my finances while I was in Sweden. Had she been paying it all this time? Why didn’t she pay it this time? What the hell is going on?

We did get it worked out that all the finance charges are dropped, and the account is cancelled now.

Me, calling AOHell: I need to cancel this thing (gives account number).

Perky Man: But why would you want to cancel, it’s a great service!

Me, grumpy: I didn’t even know I had it. I want to cancel now. I want the last payment credited to my account since I never even used it.

PM: Of course! You have a money back guarantee. Let me just look this up.
. . .
. . .
. . .
PM: Wow! You’ve never used our incredible service. We have great half off hotel deals, free flights, free rental cars! And you’ve never taken advantage of our service! Let me just send you the information and a free hotel voucher and you can call back in seven business days if you really want to cancel.

Me: No. I want to cancel now.

PM: No you don’t! You want our free offer. I can send you flight vouchers for being such a wonderful customer. I’ll just get this in the mail and you can call back before they expire.

Me, angry: NO! Cancel it now. I don’t want your flight vouchers, I don’t want your free hotel nights. I want a cancellation number right now.

PM: Of course! But if you just let me send out the information I know you’ll want to be a part of our club. I don’t understand how you could have been a member for the past four years and not have taken part in our wonderful offers. You’ve been missing out.

Me: I blame my mother. Now, give me my cancellation number.

PM: Would you like to save over $40 on your next grocery bill?

Me: No. I would be willing to spend $400 on my next grocery bill if it meant getting off the phone with you. Do I need to call my lawyer? Get me my cancellation number. Now.

PM: Your cancellation number is XXXXXXXXXXX, now I’ll just transfer you to our service department and you can learn how to save over $100 on your utilities.

Me: Click

Why, why, why am I so stupid? But it doesn’t end their. Mike decided we should call Geico and see if they could save us 15% or more on our car insurance. Since I felt guilty about the other fiasco, I finally called even though I hated to. There was no 15% savings. Instead there was a WHOPPING 55% savings. Yes, you read that right. We are going to be saving almost $1200/year on our car insurance.

To that end I called progressive to cancel our renewal and was shocked when it took less than thirty seconds and no one tried to convince me to stay or even asked my reason for leaving. It was easy.

Too easy.

Thus began the second sucky part of the day.

I want to ensure they didn’t just keep charging us, so Mike logged on to our bank account to see if there was a way to ban certain people from taking automatic payments.

The very first thing I saw: DEBIT AOL $23.90

What the m—–r f—–g hell? You know I hate cursing, but after my morning could I possibly say anything else?

Then I remembered.

A few months ago I was promised a free laptop if I completed some free offers. It was too good to be true, of course, but I was able to cancel all the free offers with a minimum of problems. I sent an e-mail to AOL and they replied that I was cancelled and it was no problem. I should have known better. I’ve dealt with the devil’s minions before. They are never that accommodating and easy.

I called the number and got a stupid computer activated thingee, but instead of punching numbers you actually spoke. This would be ok if I knew anything about my account, but I didn’t know my screen name and I didn’t use AOL so I ended up yelling ugly curse words into the receiver while Mike looked on in horrified fascination, wondering who I was talking to.

Finally, finally, finally I got to talk to the friendly guy.

Me, already grouchy: I have stupid AOL and I want to get rid of it. I don’t know any account information, I don’t have a screen name, and I don’t know anything else. FIX IT.

FG: Well, now, let’s see here. Let’s start at the beginning.

[Bunch of boring confirmation stuff]

FG: Now, why do you have AOL.

Me: Because I’m stupid! I want it off!

FG: I’m sure you’re not stupid. Why do you have AOL? It shows here you’ve never even logged on.

Me: I know! I thought I had cancelled it. It was one of those “take part in a free offer and get a laptop” but then the last free offer that you had to take was a $50,000 loan. I’m stupid!

FG: You know, if you haven’t even tried it you’d probably like it.

Me: No, I have a cable connection, I’ve had it in the past, my husband says I have to get rid of it. I want it gone.

FG: I would never try to sell you anything! Is your husband a techie? Those techies don’t like us, and try to ruin our reputation. It’s like if you got a recipe that had pecans in it and you didn’t like pecans and couldn’t take them out. Then you wouldn’t like the recipe. That’s why techies hate us. We’re really good.

Me, turning redder and redder by the second at the implication that a woman can understand is a cooking metaphor. I decide to use my girly, girly voice and be ironic: Oh, my husband says I have to get it off now! He’s really mad. I don’t know what he’ll do if I don’t cancel. Please, just cancel before my husband gets even madder.

FG: Ma’am, are you all right?

Me: No, my husband’s real mad. You better cancel it.

FG: Ma’am, just listen to me. If you get AOL you’ll get virus protection and a firewall.

Me: But my husband all ready has that and he’s really mad at me. Please cancel!

FG: What your husband doesn’t know, is that he has to pay for all those things. It’s free with AOL.

Me, thinking, yeah right it’s free.

And so the story went for a good 10 minutes with offers of free services that I could cancel later, until I just started yelling into the phone that I wanted it cancelled, and cancelled now and I better not ever have to call them again. I got my cancellation number in the end.

Why, why, why, why am I so stupid? There’s a sucker born every minute. Why does it have to be me?

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 22nd, 2005 at 12:18 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.