Corporate Restitution (The ‘Nerd has fun with phone bills)

I’m getting tired of fighting the good fight. Corporate America keeps screwing up and I’m the one who has to fix it. I’m starting to realize why most folks don’t care–it takes too much time resolve a billing error. Too much stress. Too much hassle.

I can’t even begin to tell you how much time I wasted with my credit card fiasco a few weeks back. Easily three or four hours. Not too mention all the stress it caused me. And for what? It was a situation that was entirely not my fault.

Well no more. See, all the corporations have no problem charging us extra here or there because most people don’t notice or care enough to do anything about it. But not me (I only get dicked over by family). I call and complain and get the situation resolved.

But it doesn’t seem fair. Why should I hafta do this? Why should I have to waste my time to fix your screw up? The companies don’t care about your time–it doesn’t cost them a dime. Well not anymore. An idea came to me this week when T-Mobile screwed up my phone bill: restitution. The way I see it, it’s not my fault: if I gotta do something to fix it, they need to compensate me for my time. It’s the only way they’ll ever learn. Otherwise they’ll just keep doing this. Besides, my time is important to me: I don’t like wasting it.

As previously stated, T-Mobile screw up my bill. I got an additional $4 charge on my bill this month. And of course, T-Mobile doesn’t tell me what it’s for: the bill simply said “usage charges.” The average, unsuspecting person would assume they went over their monthly allowance and pay the bill. But I knew that wasn’t the case for me because I rarely use more than 20 per cent of my minutes (which would indicate I need to change my plan or get more friends). So I called T-Mobile to find out why.

While spending a good 15 minutes on hold, a voice recording informed me that a shorter wait might be available if I called back during non-peak hours…which got me thinking: it’s midnight–exactly when are non-peak hours?

After speaking to the billing department, I was transferred to tech support because they’re the only ones capable of dealing with my phone (apparently my phone is so high-tech, a normal agent couldn’t take my call). Another ten minutes wasted on hold and I spoke to a representative.

Long story short: I was charged for a game I already had. Joe said he couldn’t take the charge off my bill ’cause it would remove the game from my phone. Unable to think of a solution, he consulted coworkers while I waited.

Finally I said to him, “Look, I’m getting tired of dealing with this. I’ve been on the phone for 40 minutes with you now. I don’t wanna waste anymore of my time.”

So he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse: he would look into it and call me back when he came up with a solution.

Twenty four hours later, I hadn’t heard back from T-Mobile or Joe so I gave them a call. When I got a hold of a representative, she looked at my account history and concluded that my problem was something she couldn’t handle.

“But you’re billing: I have a problem with my bill. It doesn’t get more obvious than that.”

She insisted that I needed to talk to tech support and transferred me. A short wait while later, I spoke to a chap in tech support who said he couldn’t help and needed to transfer me to billing.

This is when I reached my boiling point. I had enough. I was tired of waiting on hold. Tired of being on the phone. None of this was my fault. I didn’t wanna deal with it anymore. I demanded to talk to a supervisor.

“First things first: someone needs to get fired,” I inssited. “I spoke to two people tonight: the billing people said tech support had to help me. Tech support said billing had to help me. Either someone was lying or incompetent. In either case, they needed to be fired.” I wasn’t gonna stop there. I demanded a reprimand for Joe: he said he was gonna call my back and he never did. What sorta guy says he’s gonna call someone and never does (I sound like a scorned woman).

When I finished pointing out the inefficiency of T-Mobile’s bungling staff, we finally go to the root of my problem: the four bucks someone owed me. it was a simple problem with a simple solution. He coulda taken $4 out of his wallet and mailed it to me–I didn’t care. I just wanted my money back.

The supervisor said he could credit me the $4 that I was overcharged. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough for me–not at this point. I spent over an hour dealing with this. It was T-Mobile’s fault for screwing up. Not to mention the incompetent fools they have working for them. This shouldn’tve taken this long to resolve–hell, it shouldn’tve happened in the first place. I told the supervisor this. I told him that I wasn’t happy and demanded compensation. My time is valuable and I wanted to be paid for it.

So he offered to credit my account 20 bucks.

To be honest, I didn’t expect it to work–and certainly not that easily. I was fully prepared to talk to his supervisor if need be. I was willing to spend another three or four hours if need be. But dammit, I wanted something. I figured I was entitled to it.

I learned a valuable lesson–and hopefully T-Mobile did too. From now on, when Corporate America screws up, I will demand compensation–it’s only fair. Look at all I went through regarding my credit card for a problem that wasn’t even mine. And it’s not like this was the work of a stranger stealing my identity–Chase just screwed up.

See, that’s the irony behind all this. The companies try to streamline things. They teach their personnel a few things to do their job. They create departments and bureaucracies to make things more efficient (i.e., cheaper). But when something goes wrong–something not factored into their efficiency plan, no one knows how to fix it and all hell breaks lose. And the only person that really loses out is us–the customers. Because an hour of their time only cost maybe the ten bucks they’re paying an idiot phone op. But what does it cost us? Our free time. And they could truly care less.