Current mood:

relieved

Not EVERYBODY sucks at customer service, thank god
After dealing with the stupid SunTrust fiasco, I had to look into what I need to do to transfer all my auto-debits / direct deposits / etc. over to ING Direct.

In the process, I had to deal with Sallie Mae (for student loan debt) That was not a fun experience either:

1) If you have auto-debit payments set up from your band account, it gives you a 0.25% discount on your interest rate (hey, with $21,000 STILL REMAINING in student loan debt, I'll take anything I can get); when you go to the Auto-Debit section, it shows you information about which accounts you have auto debit payments set up for, and it gives you two options: sign up for auto debit, or terminate auto debit (as soon as you do this, your interest rate goes up.) THERE IS NO OPTION FOR EDITING/CHANGING an existing auto debit payment (for example... to use a different bank account?) Yes, I'm sure no young grads end up MOVING OR CHANGING BANKS at all. Freakin retarded.

2) So I look for the information to call them about it which is, of course, buried behind FAQs and "Click here to see if your question is answered!" BS before they give you a phone number. No, the question wasn't answered in the FAQ, and the 888 phone number says they are available "M-Th 8 am - 8 pm (all continental time zones)" Hmm. I call at 5:10 pm PST, and it takes me (of course) to automated, computerized menu. Par for the course so far. So I make the selections I need for "existing account", and then as it asks for "Additional information for security measures"... it suddenly "cannot verify birthdate. We need more information to verify your account." Then it cannot verify my telephone number.
Then it says "If you'd like to talk to a customer support representative, they are available 8 am - 8pm. *click*" and hangs up on me. WTF???

3) So, I go online to EMAIL them and, after jumping through the "Read our FAQ page first!" hoops, it allows me to send an email wherein I explain the situation. After clicking submit, it forces me to read the list of FAQs again before confirming I'm sure I want to send the email. Now, guiding people to FAQ before phone call or email is fine and understandable (hell, that's how I would do it); but to make them REREAD the list of common queries again AFTER they've said they want to send an email? Gay.


Anyways. That was not the good news. But the good news comes from tech (not financial) companies:

A) GoDaddy.com called me about a week ago to confirm that I had just auto-renewed 2 domain names and wanted to be sure that I really wanted these renewed. I forgot to call them the next day or two, and just now remembered today when I saw the charge on my credit card statement. So I call them, and before too long I got a friendly-sounding, laid-back guy who brought up my account and when I asked if I could still cancel and get a refund, he put me on hold for a few seconds, then came back and said "Sure, no problem. Anything else?" I thought for sure they were going to pressure me into their other services (like they do on the website), but not at all. It was so no-nonsense. He processed a refund immediately, double-checked to confirm that I wanted to keep another recent renewal, and then he noted that I have 7 more domain names coming up for renewal soon (long story short: I have a website I am working on but the spelling is not entirely phonetic, so to avoid word-of-mouth/verbal advertising confusion, I registered multiple logical spellings of the same pronunciation); he said "if you want to go ahead and renew those now I'll give you 30% off; $7/yr instead of $10/yr" so I said "sure, go for it" and boom, done. Then he politely asked if he could email a satisfaction survey to me, and that was it (but first he helped me remove the old credit cards I didn't want on my account anymore.) Very professional, very nice. I really didn't expect it from GoDaddy. They know what the fuck they're doing. Perhaps I will go ahead and get my SSL security certificate from them, after all.

B) I got an email from Lynda.com (an online training/video tutorial website for learning tech stuff; I got registered for free Adobe Acrobat 8 Professional tutorials for registering my software) about the new Acrobat 9 Pro tutorial. WTF??, I thought, considering I just bought version 8 like a MONTH AGO and at that time I even went to the Adobe website to check and see if they had any newer versions on the cusp of release, but of course they did not advertise this anywhere easily visible apparently! I went to AcademicSuperstore.com (where I get all my expensive programs at educational license discount) and, lo and behold, there's my Acrobat 8 Pro for the same price I paid but now with an offer for free upgrade to version 9 through Adobe That kind of ticked me off, so I called the Adobe support number they listed, and again got through to a nice-sounding guy (amazing -- both of these competent phone service employees sounded American. Coincidence? Doubtful) and I explained the situation and wondered if I could get the free upgrade (despite the listing saying only valid on purchases after June 2); a few moments on hold, then he returned and said it was okay and he signed me up, got my credit card (for the $6 shipping fee), verified my account info, and boom done, no problem.

Between this and the free training materials (Tutorial DVDs, reference books, etc.) that Ted the "Flex Evangelist" sent me, I am lovin Adobe right now. If I had money to buy stock in one company, it would be Adobe. (actually, I DID own stock in Macromedia back in the day, about 8 years ago... but I guess I was just too "forward thinking"; the stock stagnated, but that was before DSL and Cable made broadband so widespread, so Flash wasn't really catching on yet. And now, merging forces with Adobe, they really have the market cornered. And with these FLEX and AIR frameworks, they are really poised for even greater greatness.)


It's reassuring that not EVERYBODY dons the deadly "knife strap-on" from the movie Se7en before giving me "customer support"