When Incompetents Strike

[billroper]

On Monday morning, I got a phone call from Discover. Apparently, someone breached the Walmart.com site, cracked into my account, and tried to place a fraudulent order. This meant that Discover canceled my card and issued me a new number. Getting the number and the cards from Discover proved to be a tougher problem, as I didn't have them by Thursday or Friday and all of my autobilling stuff is tied to that card. No, I couldn't get the number over the phone, I had to wait for the cards and watch payments start bouncing.

So the cards arrived on Saturday, by which time the Chicago Tribune and I-PASS payments had already bounced. Fixing the Tribune was easy, as their website worked flawlessly.

The I-PASS phone robot, however, seemed confused. And it was. When I gave up and called the customer support number, I discovered that my transponder and daisy_knotwise's that were supposed to have been linked into a single account actually weren't. Supposedly, they are now.

Fixing up the guys who handle our burglar alarm -- also pretty easy.

Comcast, though, was completely hopeless. When I tried to update the account using the phone robot, it didn't actually update the autopay feature -- it charged a month of service to my card. I tried to log on using the website, but you can't create an account there unless you have a Comcast.Net e-mail address. I don't, nor will I. When you try to send feedback on the website using Google Chrome, it fails, claiming that you haven't filled in the description section. I had.

Meanwhile, as I went on hold to talk to a representative, I was thrown out of the queue at least three times. Then I was put on hold by a rep and thrown to the back of the queue again. Then I was put on hold by a rep who went to talk to her supervisor and thrown to the back of the queue again. Then I got a rep who explained to me that once the autopay info was cleared by a live rep, it would take a day before the phone tree would accept new info.

Meanwhile, I'd gone into chat with a representative who created an account for me at my e-mail address and said that I'd see an e-mail with the details in an hour. It's still not here six hours later, nor is it in my spam bucket.

Meanwhile, the previously mentioned supervisor actually called back, entered my info in the computer, and gave me a service credit for my trouble. This probably won't stop me from switching away from Comcast due to their decision to scramble all of the digital versions of the channels that I used to receive in clear on Expanded Basic. But it was progress.

Then there was Sprint. They had my e-mail address entered incorrectly by someone who spelled "filker" with a "ph". Needless to say, that wasn't me. Supposedly I am getting an e-mail from them as I reset my account, but that hasn't shown up in six hours, so I'm thinking that isn't happening either. And that's preventing me from fixing the autopay feature there.

So far, the only thing that's worked absolutely seamlessly is the TribCo website.

And I still have three to go, counting Sprint.

Ack!

Comments

[hms42]

Good luck with the mess from the credit card.

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

When we bought Elaine's new car last year, we accidentally left her transponder in the old car. I called to cancel it until we got the transponder and didn't have a problem until we discovered that since our transponders were linked (we didn't know they were), they canceled both transponders. We only discovered the linkage and my cancellation when we got Elaine's transponder back and called to reactivate it/them.

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

Oh, and Elaine and I were very happy switching from Comcast to DirecTV (a little less happy with Dish Network, which is cheaper, and mostly the unhappiness is that we prefer the DirecTV interface).

[quadrivium.livejournal.com]

*Hugs* We have been through this! It sucks so very mightily.

We had to get a completely new Regions account. What we do now is have a bill paying account with the autodrafts and such and a daily expenses account for groceries and restaurants and such. We don't ever use the check card on the autodraft account (except for one monthly bill I have for my website. We had to use the check card to set that up as autodraft, unfortunately.)

That way if the daily expenses card number gets stolen, it still sucks mightily, but at least all the monthly bills get paid.

*Hugs* again. So Very Sorry. Been there! I hope it all gets straightened out very soon.

Good Grief!

[jdonat.livejournal.com]

AAAAGH! Billing is one of the reasons we got away from Comcast as soon as we could. ATT-Uverse for us. Was less for at least the same number of channels -I think we have more and the internet access is pretty good, too.

Sorry about the hassle. Michelle got nailed by the TJMAX break in, and luckily Chase issues different card numbers for their debit cards -so we just had to cancel hers. My CC and debit cards are the ones we use for autobilling.

No fun. Good luck with Sprint.

[gundo.livejournal.com]

I don't have a comcast.net email address either...never have, even though I get my internet from them. I've had no problem creating logins both for my business account and my personal account.

Definite suckage, though. Hope you get it sorted out. I've had much better luck with Discover in the past than you seem to be having now.

Oh, and on the Comcast issue? Yeah, I'm in the middle of a huge battle with them now. Rendered my TV cards absolutely useless, and they want me to pay more to be able to watch channels I used to be able to watch without an issue?

[lizneely.livejournal.com]

Uggh that is so frustrating, I can't stand dealing with incompetent customer service agents and endless loops through phone menus and holds!

[catalana.livejournal.com]

Oh what fun. I hope this gets straightened out quickly. I hate having to deal with all the credit card auto pay stuff.