I should've known yesterday was going to be an off day, as when I was getting out of the shower I heard rain. I thought to myself, "it never rains in LA..." and proceed to have an oh-shit momment and ran outside to throw the top up on the Jeep. It was too late -- soaked, once again. I slogged to work wearing a raincoat and sitting on trashbags.
About noon I get a call from an 'unknown number', which typically means an 800 number of sorts. To my dismay, its a collection agency looking to scrounge up ~$90 that I supposedly owe cingular. The woman on the phone was not very polite and was anything but helpful. She insisted that if I did not pay, I'd get reported to a credit agency. I told her I understood that risk, but couldn't in my right mind give out my credit card number to someone on the phone who called me, not the other way around, and did little to officially identify herself or the company she worked for. I asked for her direct number and called her back. Sure enough, even the 800 number she called from was just a proxy to a call center, neither of which identified themselves in anyway. I proceeded to explain to her why I wouldn't pay, and after 15 minutes of escalating tempers, she gave up.
I then called Cingular. The situation was explained to me and it turns out it was fairly simple. At the end of 2006, Rachel and I combined our cell phone plans into one so that we could save some money. Our old accounts were canceled and combined into one new account number using my phone number. As it turns out, when Cingular canceled my old account, I still owed $70. At the time of cancelation I was not told of this fact or asked for the money. The real problem started when that balance due wasn't transfered over to the new account and as such lingered with my old account that I no longer had access to and just assumed was dead and gone.
Understanding the situation, but not particularly happy with it, I proceeded to go down the road over making it very clear to Cingular that I was not happy. Generally I'm a pretty likable, non-confrontational person. However, don't fucking cross me, my things or those that I care about. Dicking with credit because of your broken system is no way to get on my good side.
I spent upwards of an hour on the phone with Cingular speaking to entry-level billing representatives, their managers and even the cancelation department. They claim to have been sending me bills, which I believe. But honestly, all I do when I get my cell phone bill is check the dollar amount -- if its within $5-10 of what I usually pay, I shred the bill and then pay via E-Bills. The period between December 2006 and now as far as Cingular bills goes has been messy. We received probably half a dozen or more bits of mail from Cingular which was to be expected -- there were new accounts coming online and old ones expiring. Those in the beginning were pro-rated, and those towards the end were normal. In fact, the first combined bill we received included the service charges for our new combined plan, as well as Rachel's old outstanding balance from her old account. So they can transfer a balance due from her account, but not mine. W. T. F.
In the end I realized I wouldn't get anywhere unless I went down to the nearest Cingular store and started cracking heads, so I politely asked the Cingular representative if there was any way she could help fix this situation, since it was pretty apparent I would've paid the bill had I known about it. She couldn't help me, so I asked for Cingular's contact information for the collection agency they had sent after me, and told her that once she was done with that to transfer me to the cancelation department so I could cancel these accounts. I didn't actually cancel the accounts, but it was more to get my point across.
The battle was not over. I called the collection agency and insisted in speaking to someone other than the rude lady I had spoken to initially. The gentleman I was connected to seemed much better suited in his career as a phone jockey, and asked for my social security number. I told him I would not give it to him, but would gladly give him the last 4 digits. That wouldn't work. I proceeded, starting to feel like a broken record, to explain to him the risk of me blabbing my SSN over the phone especially since I'll also have to give my address and ultimately my credit card number, and told him that if he wanted to get my money he'd have to identify me another way. 5 minutes later, they had identified me and I asked how I could pay. They said that I could give them my credit card number or a check over the phone. I said credit card would be fine, but I'd like to do this an automated fashion -- "do you have a way to do this on the phone, or perhaps have a website?". No. At that point, I gave him my credit card number, knowing full well what I had to give him for it to be a valid charge, but had half a mind to ask him to put his mic near the numpad so I could hear him punching in the number as opposed to writing it down. Thinking this experience was coming to a close, I asked if there was anything else I needed to do. He said that he'd transfer me to the payment department to get this finalized. Transfered. The new guy asks for my credit card number AGAIN, and I tell him that I just gave it to the last guy. I explained to him my displeasure and that their system already has my information, and that he can just verify portions of it.
The end result is that I spent probably 2 hours of my day on the phone with the complete and utter imcompetency of a number of organizations, but my credit remains untarnished.
It was an interesting experience, as I couldn't help but feel like I was being pushed around. In the end, if Cingular or the collection agency wanted to fucked me over, they could've. It all smacked of loan sharking and organized crime.
In the electronic world, there are far more safeguards in place to ensure that mutual authentication is easy and secure. When I go to my banking website, I identify myself using some token over an encrypted channel. The encrypted channel is certified by a third party, and the bank clearly identifies itself and makes clear its security and privacy policies. Even once both ends are authenticated, only selected portions of my banking data is exposed. Anything that could prove dangerous in the hands of prying eyes is masked in some way, as opposed to being spoken over an unencrypted land line in a room full of people.
The sad thing is, this is just how things are done. While the electronic world has its fair share of security flaws, it is leaps and bounds ahead of the physical world in many respects.
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Posted by Jon Hart on February 23, 2007 8:39 AM
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