However, today is different than most of my days recently. Today, something blogworthy happened, so I'm gonna blog about it.
I'm currently home from class for my two-hour break between classes, and I happened to stop by my mailbox. I had a typical stack of junk mail, but one envelope stuck out to me. It had my full name and address on it, and even though I didn't recognize it, usually junk mail is addressed to "Valued Texas Resident" or some insincere crap like that. So on the off-chance it was something important, I decided to open it. Inside was a notice that read as follows:
"Dear HAYDEN GOFF,
Thank you! Central Periodical Service, our authorized representative, has placed your subscription order on 2/11/2013 for the following titles:
________________________________________________________________________
ESQUIRE
ROLLING STONE
ESPN
CAR AND DRIVER
MENS FITNESS
MAXIM
MOTOR TREND
All subscriptions are mailed to you directly from the publishers.
Please allow 60 to 90 days to get your new service started.
Your Payment Plan:
You will pay $59.90 a month for the first 30 months and nothing for the remaining months of service. The total of your 30 payments is $1,797.00"
Now, after staring at that piece of paper in panicked disbelief for a few moments, I suddenly recalled a particular cell phone call I had received last week. I was half asleep on my couch when I answered a call for a number I didn't recognize, which was probably a mistake in and of itself. However, there is a particular number from some agency who's evidently convinced that I'm an illegal immigrant or something because every time I answer it, I get an automated voice speaking to me in Spanish. I don't know enough Spanish to tell the automated voice to "get me off your call list," so I usually just answer it and immediately hang up. This time, however, the voice spoke English, and it knew my name.
It was some guy calling about my magazine subscriptions, asking if I'd like to continue them. Now, I actually do have subscriptions to Popular Science and Popular Mechanics that I'm rather fond of, and when he rattled off my apartment number and zip code I figured it had to be about those. They're the only magazines I've ever directed to this address. Not content with assumptions, however, I asked the voice, "Is this for my Popular Mechanics and Popular Science subscriptions?"
"Yes, it is." I was assured by the voice on the other end of the phone. Satisfied with that answer, I continued his little "customer satisfaction" survey and played along. Then, after that conversation had ended, he asked me if I would like to renew my subscriptions. Now, normally that would have thrown up a few red flags because not only had I subscribed to Pop Science/Mechanics via an online service that automatically renews my heavily discounted student subscriptions (which were a grand total of $20 per year for both), but that particular service has never called me before to ask this. As I mentioned before, however, I was napping before I got the call, so I groggily agreed. Sure, I'd like to keep getting these two magazines I like to read.
"And this is for Popular Science and Popular Mechanics?" I asked again, to make sure.
"Yes, that's correct." Said the voice. And so I agreed to renew my subscriptions, identified my credit card for him, and told him I would like to have the magazines shipped to the same location.
I was then transferred over to another person, a supervisor of some sort, who asked me if the other young man I had been talking to had been kind and professional with me. I told him the other voice had been perfectly professional to make sure the previous phone jockey got his biscuit and a good pat on the head, and then proceeded on with what the new voice instructed me to do. He mentioned a price of $59 for the subscriptions, which was a little steeper than I had remembered, but when I asked him about it he simply explained it away by stating that they'd had to raise their prices recently. I do enjoy Popular Science/Mechanics, though, so I figured sure, why not? It's only a once-yearly payment, I can deal with a couple extra dollars tacked on. He then had me answer yes and no to a series of questions and confirmations, and after what seemed like an hour in a conversation I was ready to hang up on since I picked the phone up, we were done.
Now let me be clear about something. I may have been groggy, but I paid some hard attention to that auctioneer-speed gibberish he was spouting into my ear after instructing me to respond to certain key words with "yes" or "no" like some kind of Pavlovian experiment. Never at any single moment in time did he mention ANY of the magazine titles above, or anything about a total payment of nearly $1,800. Still convinced that all I'd done was renew my subscriptions to Popular Science and Popular Mechanics, I went on about my nap.
And then today happened. Now, let me explain a little something about today BEFORE I opened that letter. In the past week since that phone call, my Alienware decided it was going to pull one of those "We're going to update and shut down your computer in 15 minutes whether you like it or not, so suck an egg" maneuvers, only instead of improving anything, it learned a new trick where it can no longer boot Windows. Furthermore, I had a headache-inducing weekend of homework where I had to read two full novels, several chapters of another, and write a critical analysis paper comparing Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse to Salvador Dali's "The Persistence of Memory." And regardless of having this done, I got a grand total of ZERO hours of sleep last night. Then, upon arriving at campus, I was rudely reminded that despite the fact that I was in the English building where ALL OF THE PAPERS ARE WRITTEN, we only have one single computer lab, and it's booked solid 24/7 for classes. ("But Soul, there are only classes on FIVE days of the week..." Yes, that's called hyperbole. Shut up.) So in order to print the damn paper I had written for class and turn it in, I had to go over to the writing lab. You know, the one where they help you write papers, and then you print them out and turn them in. Except for the part where evidently, every computer in that lab is completely incapable of printing anything. After this discovery was made, I was 10 minutes late to a class I arrived early for, and it was raining.
And then I get home and find a notice in my mailbox telling me that I owe some magazine syndicate eighteen hundred dollars for a bunch of magazines I wouldn't even read if they were the only things on the magazine rack of the most awkward doctor's office waiting room on Earth. Irate does not begin to describe the emotion I could feel welling up inside me.
And then I spied a 1-800 number on the bill.
Now, I understand that working in customer service sucks. I understand that working in that particular position means that you literally deal with nothing but people who are already pissed off. And I also understand that when you're working customer service as an underling for an evil corporation of phone monkeys who charge unwitting college students over half their tuition in phantom magazine subscriptions, you're probably spending every waking moment with somebody biting your head off. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if that was the particular circle of hell your desk was stationed at. And so in light of all this, I tried to be pleasant. I really did. Fortunately, I was immediately directed to an actual human being instead of having to play the world's worst game of phone tag with an automated caller system that could misinterpret plain English into something akin to Swahili curse words. Unfortunately, I was extremely pissed off and immediately directed to a human being with feelings I was going to have to resist the urge to hurt.
I was greeted by one of the cheeriest voices I've ever heard. The voice introduced herself as Melanie and asked what she could do for me today. Calmly explaining that I had just received a bill for a gigantic stack of magazines I'd never even thought about subscribing to, was looking at paying (and I'm restating this for emphasis) over HALF MY COLLEGE TUITION in bills for said magazines, and was (understandably, I thought) a little bit absolutely livid, I was going to try my golly gosh darnedest to not completely breathe rage-induced sarcastic venom through the phone line. She promised to do her best to help me, and I said that the best way she could help me was to remove this ridiculous charge from my account immediately, and then immediately remove my account and make sure I'm never contacted by this company again. She told me that would be no problem, and she would get right on it.
"However," she began, "You mentioned that you liked Popular Science and Popular Mechanics, and if you'd like I can see if I can get you on the subscription list for those, or some similar magazines, because we'd be able to get them to you for less, I'm sure."
Now, here's a conundrum for you. How exactly does a living human being interpret the equivalent of "I am hinging on murderous rage over the fact that your company has duped me into a $1,800 bill for subscriptions to seven testosterone-infested packets of emergency toilet paper and I want you to make that not a thing" as "Clearly, the best way to handle this situation is to attempt to sell this person more magazines."
Is it her job to do that? Probably. Did I care? Not even a little bit.
But against all odds, I remained civil. And I told her, as kindly as I could, that no thank you, I really wasn't interested in any magazines from this company ever, and I meant ever, and if she would just remove this bill and remove me from their system forever, that would be just hunky dory. And so she complied, and after one last reminder that if I ever decided I wanted any magazines I should come on back, our business was concluded and I hung up the phone.
And that's how I dodged an eighteen hundred-dollar bullet, managed not to make the customer service lady cry, and possibly got my credit card information hijacked. This is the part where I should say that the moral of the story is if you get phone calls from magazine companies you should just hang up the phone and go back to sleep, but because I'm still a little bit bitter over the whole situation, I'm just going to say that the real moral of the story is that magazine salesmen are the spawn of Satan.
-The Sarcastic Soul-
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