customer service

M just called our credit card's customer service number about this finance charge they slapped us with after paying late--which, our payment was late only because their stupid system returned our bank's payment--it was scheduled two weeks in advance. It's really weird but the same thing happened last year in July/August--their system stripped the first digit off of our account number off and so our bank said the account wasn't found. Anyway, I talked to them by phone this week, and the bitch representative on the other end claimed there was nothing they could do about that $39 fee. So I said fine, hung up and handed the phone to M.

It's true that M has had a series of crappy jobs since he moved here, but he has also learned an awful lot of skills that we put to good use. One of those? Getting what he wants out of customer service people, as he has experience with being that person himself. I am generally too polite to them for them to take me seriously, so M is handy to have around. The $39 was promptly removed and there were many apologies. I checked today to make sure that they really had reversed the charge and that the newly scheduled payment had gone through... and to see the late fee/finance charge that I figured they'd be giving us. So predictable.

Anyway, he called just now about the finance charge, and although I could only hear his half of the conversation, I could tell that it was not starting off well. He was polite but firm, but beginning to argue. She clearly is telling him that the finance charges cannot be reversed because the payment was late. And my ever-so-diplomatic, polite husband says scathingly: "Wanna bet?" before putting the fear of God into the poor woman.

He hung up thirty seconds later, the finance charges a mere memory.

Gosh, but I love that boy.

inferiority complex*

You know what the problem with preparing all the content for Mosaic Minds is? It always makes me want to be more. I want to write more and read more and publish stuff and create more websites and travel and be Interesting. It's kind of enough to give one a complex. I seriously cannot believe what it has turned into by now. We are fabulous... if I do say so myself.

*Speaking of inferiority complexes.. Boyo told me yesterday that us poor Americans really should have a significant inferiority complex because we don't have a language of our own. The really really great thing about his citizenship last fall? Right then when I reminded him that he was just as much of an American as I am so shove it. ;) Then we degenerated into an argument about how he can't become president and therefore isn't "as" American as I am. Given how he made me call him"Mr. Vice President, sir" when he became an officer of the Scandinavian Heritage club... I think it's just as well that he can never actually become president...