Call Center Hell

Preparing to get on with my day this morning when a notice appeared on my phone that my automated payment to my phone plan failed.

Oh. right. A couple of weeks ago my bank called me and said my credit card was part of a group that may have been compromised, and that I needed to come down to the bank and get a new credit card.

Thus, the card number the phone company was using was no longer valid. Ah, I thought, I would call up the phone company and give them the new credit card number.

I called, and was connected to an agent who understood the situation, and explained she would make this payment with my new credit card number, and then swap the new credit card number in and it would all be fine. Great! I thought.

OK. She came back on the phone and said all I needed to do was listen to the automated terms and conditions message, and then signify that I agreed to them by pushing the number 1, and the transaction would be completed.

She transferred me, and the line was disconnected.

I called back and got another agent. I explained the situation. She looked at my account and said she could see that I had paid this month, but my credit card number was still the old number. She removed my old credit card number and put in my new phone number, and it would take effect as soon as I listened to the automated terms and conditions recording and pushed the number 1. As soon as she transferred me, the line went dead.

I called back and got another agent. I asked to speak to a supervisor. The agent asked why, and if she could help me. I explained the situation again, and asked to speak to a supervisor. The agent put me on hold, which lasted about half an hour, and when a supervisor came on the line, she evidently could not hear me, so after asking for the caller to identify themselves several times, said she had to end the call, and the line went dead.

I called back and got another agent. I asked to speak to a supervisor. The agent heard my story ( I was getting good at it by now) and put me on hold. This time also lasted about a half an hour. This time the supervisor said she could see where I had called several times before and would be happy to help. . She did not see where any payment had been completed today, so I still owed for this month. Also, the old card number was still on my account. She would put me on hold while she fixed that. After ten minutes of musak, suddenly I was treated to sounds normally associated with connecting to a fax machine for another ten minutes, and then the call was disconnected.

I called back, and got another agent. I told my story once again. He said he was very sorry and could sympathize with my situation and would stay on the line to make sure we talked with a supervisor and get the situation fixed.

It has been half an hour, and we are still waiting. So far, it has been about two hours on the phone since this started this morning.

T-Mobile, if anyone is interested.

1 comment to Call Center Hell

  • Ah. The agent asked if he could call back when a supervisor answered, and I said yeas and hung up. When they called back, the Supervisor affirmed that no payment had been made, and the old card number was still in the system. She used the new card number to make a payment, and swapped out the old card number with the new card number. Then transferred me to the automated system to listen to the terms and conditions to complete the transaction by pushing 1. NO! FOR GODS SAKE NO!
    After several automated transfers, a nice Tier 1 agent greeted me, thanked me for calling the support center to make a payment, and asked what phone number I wished to make a payment for today.
    Awww. Bucket.

Leave a Reply