Ah, at last, a momentary break from legions of idiots calling in becuase their credit cards don’t work. Only nine of them in queue as I type this, down from the double digits we’ve had for much of the day.
And why are these people all calling in one what should be a peaceful Sunday? Because their credit card issuer was bought by another credit card issuer. They were mailed replacement cards and advised in repeated letters going back for the last two months that their cards would stop working as of today. They’ve managed to disregard no fewer than three pieces of mail originating either from us or from their new credit card company, and this is somehow our fault. Or if they didn’t disregard them, they shredded them. Or if they actually opened and read them, they didn’t understand the big bold type that said Your cards will stop functioning on May 20, 2007 and you must then use your new cards.
These are cards that target college students, so presumably they all have enough of an intellect to learn how to read. They just choose not to and, someow, this is all our fault for only telling them at least three different times what was going on.
Now sure, some of them I have some sympathy for, like the ones who are on vacation or studying abroad or who get their mail at home and their dumbass parents are the ones who threw it out. Such sympathy quickly evaporates when they start calling me a “motherfucker” or whatever because I can’t give them information about a card that’s not issued by us. Yeah, fuck you too, right in your fucking necks, you dumbfucks. My credit cards all work, bitches.
I have complete sympathy. I work in HR outsourcing. It’s pretty well known that a large portion of any mailing will go unread, and of those that are read, anything important needs to be in large print in the first paragraph.
As far as I’m concerned, that’s the credit card company’s own damn fault. I get so much crap mail from my credit card company, from “convenience checks” to “special offers” to “you have 3 million points! Choose between these 5 crappy gifts” things that I don’t open mail from them anymore. Bills are paid on-line. If they’d stop spamming me with crap, maybe then I’d read what they send me.
Exactly! For all I know my credit card company is offering me free tickets to Bora Bora with a stopover in Heaven, but they send me so much crap I just shred it. Maybe you should stop sending me “checks” and I’d read your mail, huh?
Sorry, Otto, it’s probably unfair that you end up having to deal with this crap, but the fact is that credit card companies are their own worst enemies when it comes to issues related to correspondence. I open all the mail that comes from my own credit card company, and even the stuff that has big red letters on the envelope saying “Important Account Information Enclosed” usually contains nothing more than an attempt to upsell me to another product or enhanced service of some sort. When 95% is just junk mail, i can completely understand why people give up and stop reading.
My bank, that I exclusively use for online banking sends me emails frequently. They decided the best possible way to notify me that my debit card had been part of a group that may have been compromised was, not by notifying me when I log in to internet banking. Not calling me. Not emailing me. But by mailing the notice and subsequent card in a generic white envelope that did not indicate what company it was from, just an address and for all the freakin’ world looked exactly, precisely like junk mail.
When I looked back through my email box, they had sent me 3 emails about car sales, insurance offerings, whatever, since they sent out the original notice about my debit card being compromised. You know what? I got 24 hours to report a loss to you. How about you show me the same freakin’ consideration in a way that is possible for me to actually find out about it.
Oh, to the OP. Sorry about your day. What ever job you have it is a pain in the ass to keep having to repeat the same shit over again because people won’t listen/read/pay attention.
Ask me how many times a day I say “Two to call.” Poker hand is 2.5 minutes, 10 players in the hand, 4 rounds of betting, which means that in 2.5 minutes it is very possible for me to need to say “two to call” approximately 40 times. Multiply that by a 12 hour shift.
If someone chooses not to read their mail, that’s certainly their choice and their right. I don’t read 80% or more of the mail I get. But, I don’t bitch at other people if that leads me to miss something important as a result.
Dunno about the emails, none of the companies I work with send out any email notification of anything (most of them don’t even have websites, which is incredible to me) but there may be banking regulations regarding sending that sort of information via non-secure email. My own credit cards email me notices that my statements are ready but never the statements themselves. As for the replacement card, you can thank mail thieves for that. We make our envelopes as non-descript as possible to avoid attracting any attention to them so thieves won’t target our mailings.
I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. Here in the Complaint Dept., we prefer to think of it as giving them the opportunity to demonstrate their commitment to having their ‘challenge’ resolved.
(Bet it’ll be awhile before some management bozo tells me to ‘think outside the box’ again.)
Last year, when my credit card expired, I didn’t receive the new card at the usual time (a month or so before the due date) and had to call them up to get it. But the explanation I got was that they didn’t have my address on record, so couldn’t send it out.
???
I get credit card statements from them every month, and have been living in the same place for four years!
Left hand, meet right hand. Talk a while. You need to work together so often, it would really help things go a lot smoother if you just keep in constant communication.
My worst experience with a card renewal (it was actually a check card, but same thing) was when I tried to make a purchase and the card was declined. Of course my bank wasn’t open at that time of night, so I call them the next day to find out what was up. They tell me that my card has been canceled, since my new one is in the mail (my current card still had 2 months before the expiration). When I asked why my current card was canceled before I had even received the new one and activated it (it didn’t arrive for another 2 days by the way), the response I received was “we accidentally canceled the current cards for a very small number of people, so it’s not a big deal.” She actually told me that it was “not a big deal.” I’m not sure how she figured the fact that it happened to very few people was supposed to make me feel better, when I was one of the people it happened to. Needless to say, I terminated my business with their bank immediately.
