I don’t know how large companies think of the stupid stuff they put us through. The one that makes me insane is when you have just completed a 45 minute hold, listening to nice recordings and music that Lawrence Welk wouldn’t listen to, and you finally get a helpful person, and you need to take another important call, and the helpful person tells you that you cannot call them back directly. That you will have to go back through the 45-minute hold and the recordings.

Who thinks of this shit?

Here’s another one that my wife and I endured yesterday.

She was making the arrangements for a trip to visit one of our daughters. She was using a charge card, that had my name as the ‘primary’ cardholder, to pay for the flights, car rental and a hotel. For some reason, while she was trying to do all this online, it just wouldn’t take. Keep in mind she has the same card with her name on the card. So, she calls the charge card help people and starts to go through the entire process all over again.

After pinning down flights and dates and cars and hotel rooms for the second time—–GRUELING!——the helper person tells my wife “before we process these charges I will need to speak to the ‘primary’ cardholder. Well, the ‘primary’ cardholder, me, is not there so my wife calls me frantically on the phone, fearful that she may have to take another trip into phone hold music recording land. Fortunately, I answer the phone. My wife, now a candidate for sainthood, conferences me in with the totally, completely, disinterested customer hatred rep who is clearly disappointed that I am on the line and she might break her personal record of 47 consecutive calls going unresolved.  The customer hatred rep puts me through a litany of questions to see if I am me. Height, weight, time in the 40 yard dash, social security number, zip code, drivers license number, place of birth and if I was a normal, breach or caesarean birth. Like all cardholders we are in terror that an important call suddenly comes in from a family member and we have to get off the phone and start this insanity all over again.

But, alas, the task is complete. Our trip is planned and paid for.  All resolved in less than 107 hours. Connectivity achieved with multiple cell phones, ‘primary’ cardholders and cardholders of a lower social class.

Questions:

• Why didn’t they just give us the option to set all this up in the first place?
• Why do large companies ALWAYS author procedures from the inside out?
• Why don’t they consider all the nonsense we AND their people went through?

WHAT an opportunity exists today for a company to take a look at things through the eyes of their loyal customers!!!!!

I’m Paul Karem. You can use this website no matter if you are the ‘PRIMARY’ reader.