Feeling Punk'd

I finally gave in, after ALL this time holding out I caved. I bought a cell phone. My reasoning for not having was simple really, I don’t answer the phone at home, why would I want to carry around something I don’t answer? But pay phones are getting few an far between, damn them, and I have found myself more and more needing to make a call and not being able to find one.

But the thing about it is, I didn’t want to have 2 phones so I thought I’d replace my land line with a cell if I could find the right plan. Now my problem is that most of my time spent on the phone is long distance. Yeah leave it to me to live in a city far away from both friends and family. So after spending a good two hours with Wade the dynamic sales guy, I ended up with this phone that allows you to make long distance calls through a wireless router, at anytime in the day everyday, basically free aside from the monthly rate. Sounds all spiffy til I get home and try and get the damn thing to work. After a few hours of cursing and swearing I phone the Rogers support line, cuz gee that’s where I got the phone from. The guy had no idea what I was talking about and after trying to explain to him for the fourth time he finally just said, “oh we don’t do that, you need to call Fido.”

-twitch-

By this time I had lost whatever semblance of patience I manage to hold to on a daily basis and, yes, I actually yelled into the phone, “It’s a Rogers phone!!! I bought it at Rogers five hours ago!!!”

Anyways I managed to get it to work and after a week or so of using it, it’s a piece of shit and makes me want to talk on the phone even less then I did before. Only another 3 years to go on the contract….

This got me to thinking about other customer service nightmares I have been through. Like the time I had to mail a small package. Sounds simple right? Not so fast. I was at work and the address was for a post box at the main post office (where all the mail gets processed) which is only 5 blocks away, so I decide to just walk it over. I get up to the counter and I can actually SEE the post box several feet behind the guy who comes over to help me. I point over his shoulder at the post box and say,

“I want to put this in there.”

He promptly grabs it and puts it on the scale and tells me “that will be $5.95.”

-blink-

“But I just want it to go right in there.”

“Yeah but you still have to pay.”

“Fine, how much again?”

“Do you want standard or overnight delivery?”

My lips then part as all sorts of replies ripple through my mind like clowns dancing around center ring. I can even here the circus music echoing in the background. In the end I chose the best answer I could come up with,

“Standard is fine….”

Then there was the car rental when my friend came out to visit me for the weekend. Go pick her up at the airport, get a car there and then I can drop her off when she leaves and just bus it home. Simple right? Not so fast. I get there and tell them I have a reservation. She then asks me for my boarding pass. I look around briefly to make sure I am actually in the car rental place and not about to board a flight for Tahiti.

“I don’t have one”

“Well you need one”

“To rent a car? I’ll be the one driving it, I am not expecting a full crew and a pilot.”

“Well we only rent to people flying in and out of Vancouver.”

My eyes glance about looking for the camera because surely I’m on a show like punk'd or something. Or maybe I’ve fallen into some alternate reality where my life is now very similar to a Seinfeld episode. Something…anything because this makes no sense whatsoever.

“It didn’t say that when I made the reservation.”

“Well it’s under terms and conditions” (yeah you know that 2 page long document typed in 5 point font that no one in their right mind ever reads? Yeah that one)

“So you are telling me you won’t rent me a car.”

“That’s right.”

I’ll stop there cuz what I said next is not fit for human consumption. At least they didn't call security...lol