Things Not to Do to a Customer - Call Them Stupid!

I knew it was going to be a good morning when I was awoken by my mother who told me that the garbage men did not pick up our trash today. She laid a check and the bill on my nightstand, told me the bill wasn’t late and to deal with it.

Yeah, could’ve dealt without on that.

Not only that, but I struggle to a sit, sniffling and snorting, as I tried to suck oxygen in through my nose. I wasn’t succeeding, coughed a few times, and finally drew a breath into my nasal cavity that hit finally hit my lungs.

I rolled over and looked at the bill and check. Mom was right. The bill wasn’t due for another two weeks and yet they decided to skip by our house. Interesting.

Even more interesting was the spring-cleaning my mother and I did. We cleaned out the garage, scaled back the shrubbery, and cleaned out closets. Our house looked like one of those backwoods hillbilly hideouts with all the shit out in front. The only thing missing was a dilapidated loveseat, some rotting wicker furniture, and beer bottles scattering the law, preferably of the Natty Ice labeling variety.

Anyway, I knew what I had to do. I had to call and find out what the hell had happened, berating and belittling if need be.

I’m great at berating and belittling. Ask the cable company. I had to call them and impersonate our mother when our cable went out DAYS before the 2008 summer Olympics. This was heart stopping for me and completely unacceptable. Sure, we all get into the Olympics and like watching it, but this year, the Olympics were personal for me. My old gymnastics coach had a gymnast on the USA Olympic team. No, she wasn’t Shawn Johnson or Nastia Luikin, but she still won a silver medal for the team competition (and a gold the previous year at the Worlds). I was able to watch my coach’s gymnast.

Need more proof of my endless tirades and rants? See previous entries titled “A Bunch of Crooks – My Insurance Company,’ “Round 2: I’m Taking Back Control,” “Verizon is the Devil and my Scapegoat,” and probably many others I’m leaving out…

Anyway!

Our trash needs to be picked up. It just flat out needs to go. It setting there are Clampett-like is just UNACCEPTABLE. Now, I have two weapons in my arsenal. One is a check for the total bill that I am looking at and the other is the bill itself that says when the bill is due – April 20 – so you do the math.

I call and impersonate my mother (like I have so many times before because of my berating abilities) and tell them our garbage did not get picked up today.

“Let me check,” says the operator.

I get put on hold and listen to some really bad elevator music. After listening to bad music long enough to drag my laptop into bed, open it, check my e-mail, log onto Facebook and get onto Sorority Life (yes, I’m going to admit it) and bank my money before people attacked me, going to back to my e-mail and reading my grandmother’s forwards (there were five in total), the operator got back to me.

Now, it’s going to get a little bit tricky here. I am playing my mother talking about me, so please try to follow.

“The bill wasn’t paid in December.”

This is so fucking a lie. I drove all the way to BFE, the northeastern most border of the county, past farms, farm equipment dealers, and over an interstate to get there, paid bill and even asked for a damn receipt.

“My daughter paid that in December. The beginning of the year at the absolute latest. She gave me a receipt.”

“Let me check,” the woman says.

The bad elevator music once again descends over the line. I click back over to Sorority Life, go to the spa, and then fight some people. I think about the forwards and decide to brighten some people’s day by sending three of them on (one is about politicians, one is about funny bumper stickers, and one is about Tiger Woods).

Finally she comes back. “There was a balance of $40 unpaid on the account, if you look at the bill…”

This is so the first that I am hearing of this. Nowhere on the receipt was a balance listed and no word was uttered about a balance.

“Ok, I said, so…if it’s on my bill…and my bill isn’t due until April 20,” I’m saying this slowly so it sinks in, “why is my service stopped now?”

“Because the $40 was due in December,” answers this woman. This conversation is fastly going south now.

“Ok, well nothing was said to my daughter and no notices were sent to the house that service was going to be suspended. I’m sending my daughter up with a check, I just want to know that the truck is going to be able to pick up my trash today.”

“I can’t guarantee that, ma’am,” she said.

“Well, I can guarantee you that no one said anything about $40. I can guarantee you that most people get a head’s up before service is suspended. If we had a head’s up, we wouldn’t have cleaned up the garage.”

“I didn’t tell you to clean out your garage,” she said. She is so asking for it.

“That may be true, but I don’t understand why you send a bill with a due date on it when you intend to suspend service before that bill is even due.”

Now, read very closely. This is where she really fucks up.

“Service was suspended because of the $40 that was unpaid.”

“The $40 that is tacked on here-“ I start to say but she cuts me off. SHE CUTS ME OFF!

Cutting me off is SO a mistake, but her bigger mistake lies in what she says next…

“Well, ma’am, it’s common sense that if you don’t pay your bill your service is suspended.”

Now, may be I got just a little bit worked up here in this next part, but I don’t think so because this woman has just called me out and said I was stupid. Saying I had no common sense is a very nice euphemism for saying I was STUPID. Me! Stupid! I have two college degrees! Tutor children! Have taught children! I’ll gladly cop to being a bitch, a bit neurotic, a chocoholic, and a control freak, but I am not stupid!

“Did you just call me stupid!?” I asked drawing the stupid out as much as could to make it sound more like two separate words – “STOO – PID”

“No ma’am,” she said.

“You did! You just said that I was stupid!”

Now she’s trying to backtrack. “I said common sense.”

“You meant is as a synonym for stupid! Meaning I was stupid.”

“All I was saying,” she says trying to squelch my tirade. Tirade squelching so does not work on me. I like my tirades, my rants, and I take great pleasure in finally releasing a rant. To try to delay it is like standing in front of a charging elephant with a plastic toy gun. You’re going to get hurt.

But before she finally gives in to my inevitable tirade, she gives me way more ammunition by saying, “I did not say you were stupid, I just said that services are stopped when people do not pay their bills.”

“So not only are you saying I’m stupid, but you’re judging me because you think I’m some white trash hillbilly who doesn’t pay their bills? Who are you to judge me and say I’m stupid. I’ll tell you what, since you’re not going to pick up my trash, I’ll have my daughter drop it off to you guys when she pays her bill! How about that!”

There’s more interruption. She tries to tell me I can’t take my trash to them.

“Don’t shush, me!” I said. “Listen. I’m the customer. All I want is my trash taken care of. If you won’t pick it up, I’ll bring it to you!” I said.

“I’ll let them know you’re coming,” I said.

“Good!” I snapped and hung up the phone.

With the check and bill, I drove to the office and told them I wanted to speak to a manager. A woman came out and I told her my name.

“Were you the one my mom was speaking to?” I asked.

“No, I was not, but I did hear some of the conversation,” she said. “She probably could’ve handled the call a little bit better.”

Yeah, she should have. She needs to nix talking about common sense with customers that are irate.

She brings out the bill and I calmly explain that a heads up would’ve been nice, that I paid the bill (I’m no longer playing my mother,) and nothing was said to me about a balance. I was then told that calls were supposedly made to my mother’s cell phone last week and messages were left about the suspension of service. My mother never received such calls and doesn’t check her voicemails (I don’t either. It’s way too tedious and time taking. If it’s important, people know to text me).

I explain our problem. That we cleaned our garage out and if we don’t get the trash pick up this week, then we’ll have trash left behind next week because in addition to that trash we’ll have another week’s worth of trash.

And now comes the revelation that could’ve saved EVERYONE a lot of pain and heartache.

“Well, we don’t have the drivers go back anymore for pick-ups for free,” she said. “We had people taking advantage of it.”

“So if it’s not for free, you do have pick-ups? How much do they cost?”

“Five dollars,” she said.

“Well, all right,” I said and dug a five-dollar bill out of my purse, handed the checks to her and waited while I got receipts and VERIFIED that the account was up-to-date.

It was.

And a few short hours ago, the trash man came back around and picked everything up.