The run around

Do you ever feel like you get the run around from everyone these days? Yesterday was one of those days for me. I have been busy working on a school family night the last couple of weeks. Families are playing bingo and I hear it has been a lot of fun in the past.

After volunteering in one of my boy's classes yesterday, my cohort and I spent some time trying to plan how we would set everything up. We have limited time to get everything together as we have to wait until 6pm when the after school program clears out of our space. Then I had to go out and purchase the food and drink for tonight.

I got home (I was tired) and looked at some charges that hit my credit cards. One was for a renewal on the newspaper that I never authorized. I has subscribed to the paper but decided I would cancel when our 26 weeks were up. I immediately called the paper and the representative told me that when I subscribed (which I did on the Internet) I enrolled in the EZ pay. I probably had no choice once on the Internet than to do EZ pay. I take every opportunity to by-pass a phone call if I can do it on the Internet. Honestly, I feel that these companies have a responsibility to email the customers so they can be aware of the charge. My subscription to People is on EZ pay but they email me in advance so that I can cancel if I choose to.....but why would I ever do that.

The other charge really had me fired up. I had received 3 $20 gift cards for a promotion that this credit card offered over the holidays. We used them this past weekend at one store and then charged the remaining balance on that company credit card. I see that not only did I get charged the remaining balance but had 3 $20 charges. My first call to the credit card company was not productive. She told me I would have to contact the store to get the card numbers otherwise there was nothing they could do (meaning she could not believe me). As you probably can guess the store told me that they could not help me. They would not have access to the gift card numbers. So back to the credit card company where this nice man helped me. He had heard the conversation when I first called in. He took it to his manager and they decided to dispute the charges with the store. I will get credit back for the 3 $20 charges on my account and they will try to get paid from the store. Not sure why or how that could happen but I will ALWAYS keep my gift cards in the future. It probably took oever 1 hour of my time to get this resolved.

No that is not enough.....I gave a magazine gift subscription as a Christmas gift. The email stated that the first issue would arrive in 4 to 6 weeks. We are 9 weeks out and it has yet to be seen. I sent a note to customer service from the website. I get a response back saying they can't help me and I need to send an email to a different address. Then they provide a listing of all their magazines with email addresses. It is like this person did not want to take the time to help and maybe didn't even read the issue. So I forwarded the email I received to this "new" address and have yet to hear a thing. I like to have all the history on these type of issues. This is one case where I would love to have a number so that I can actually speak to a person and resolve what I feel should be a very simple issue.

Customer Service I think has really tanked these days. If you have ever called a help line today you must sit through 5 plus minutes of a menu and all you really want to do is to talk to a live body.