My Blaugh is My Soapbox
You know what capitalism is? Gettin' fucked!
All I wanted to do today was pay my bills, go into town, find a wifi hotspot with comfy chairs (bean bags preferred) and get some writing done. That just wasn't in the cards. I did, however, wind up blogging from here:
I blogged from my front porch today. Photo from last year. Yes, that is my car.
First, I went to pay the ISP bill, but I couldn't do that online because their payment handling system was down--Oh joy! I called their support line and talked to a friendly young woman. She told me that she would be more than happy to run my payment but there would be a $5 convenience fee. Convenience fee my ass! Fortunately, I could go through the automated system for free, but this really defeats the purpose.
You see, I do my business online so that I can pay bills in as little time as possible. But when the people i do business with has an online payment system go down, it really cramps my style, especially when they tell you to conduct your business on the website. I think that there ought to be a law that if their busted a$$ website is broke without a week's prior notice of maintenance work to be performed, companies ought to forego that month's payment. If doing business over the web is so convenient for all parties involved, maybe the service providers would consider upping the IT budget to make sure they had someone knowledgeable on call at all ours to keep their busted a$$ shit from breaking.
This is especially irksome when you can call and make your payments immediately (well, as immediately as those slow so-call "automation" systems will deliver). Why is it I can make a payment over the phone and not over the website, especially if they are using the same company to process the payments? I know its different systems and different implementations, but it's still irksome. And to add insult to injury, they want to charge you a convenience fee for having their representative run the payment. Why? Because their site is down and their office is only open during normal business hours...which is when the rest of us have to work. Service companies my ass.
Speaking of adding insult to injury, the next bill I went to pay was a credit card issued through my bank. I won't name the bank here, but it rhymes with "Hump Us." The bank's website has this feature that allows you to schedule automated payments to entities. So for instance, if I didn't want to have to worry about it, I could set up an automatic payment to go out every month on say the fifth to say the phone company. Of course I don't do this because I want to ultimately decide when what gets paid. But I do use this service to pay the bank since I can wait and have payment scheduled for the due date since the money is staying within the institution.
Now, I have used this feature for the past oh, I don't konw, three years? and I've never had a problem with the feature. Until today. When I wanted to make this payment and be through with it. Apparently, the bank uses a third party for such transactions. The data is collected on the website, sent to the third party and then the bank's database is updated. Well apparently, that little background processing was broke today because the bank's website kept wanting me to authenticate via user name and password with the third party. Now, this is right after i just got through dealing with the ISP.
I'm livid.
So I call support. And hold. Then I have to dial a 2056 bit PGP key and wait for the FBI to conduct a background check. Finally I get to talk to someone who says, "let me transfer you to customer service." (I thought I WAS talking to customer service.) Upon transfer, I get a recording that tells me that I can only get help Monday through Friday 8-5.
I'm thinking about suing for false advertising.