“Convenience” fees?

Update (2/21/10): I heard back from Steph, who said that (in part) the reason behind it is to get more people to switch to automatic bill pay. I’ve had so many billing SNAFUs with Qwest’s billing that I refuse to allow them to automatically take money out of my account, and many of the other people who are outraged about this are saying they refuse to sign up for automatic billing as well. Another issue I have (along with others) is that there was absolutely no notice of the change. If you, like I do, wait until a few days before to pay the bill online, all of a sudden you’re hit with a bill pay fee (and I’ve read other accounts of people who paid via their phone, which is possible, only to be hit with a $4.00 fee instead of just the $1.00 fee for the online bill pay) and you have no choice: Pay it or be hit with late fees. (By the way, the reason I deal with Steph from Twitter is that their phone reps are rude and unhelpful and the executive customer service person I dealt with was extremely unhelpful as well. Steph has always been polite and very helpful, so I do give the Twitter reps a lot of credit: It’s not their fault that Qwest is going to this silly system, but the more people who speak out against it, the more Qwest knows that it’s a ridiculous fee to levy.) I have checked my past bills and all emails I’ve received from Qwest, and there was NO notice of this fee addition. The small print on the bills still tells you that you can pay online or via your phone’s bill pay function and does not mention the additional fees associated with this. If you, as many, have been paying a particular way for years, this is completely out of the blue. I wouldn’t be so upset about it if I had at least had some notice of hte change. (I was also told the change was rolled out different months for different states, which is why some started in December, some in January, and apparently mine in February. The fact that this has been known for so many months and still no notice to people that it would be starting and, more importantly, when it would be starting for each state is just bad business. /update

Okay, you’re all probably sick of hearing my “Tales of Qwest” already, but bear with me on this one.

I logged into my Qwest account this weekend (which, in and of itself, is always a gem to do. I always try to log in with Firefox and have tons of issues with none of the buttons working properly. I then decide to start up Chrome and finally actually get logged in. I then have to navigate to the correct payment section to pay my bill and pray that the buttons work — sometimes they do in Chrome, and sometimes I just have to keep trying or come back later) and discovered that they are now charging a “convenience fee” for people who pay online.

I always have wondered why businesses go to this model of payment, when it makes absolutely no sense. I emailed Steph at Qwest’s twitter customer service (whom I’ve written about before) to find out why they did this all of a sudden (with no notice to customers, I might add, so I was afraid I’d either have to pay the ridiculous fee or be charged a late fee, neither of which sounded like a good idea). Instead of answering the question, she gave me ways to pay the account balance without going online.

Which makes me wonder: Why have an online payment service if you’re going to make it more difficult to use than another way? I’m assuming they have paid to have this set up correctly to take the differing ways of payment, so why waste their own money?

But back to the other issue, as you can tell, paying online isn’t really “more convenient” for me, the consumer, because I’ve always had so many issues with Qwest’s website anyway (and I’m not the only one, as I’ve found through keeping an eye on their Twitter page). In fact, it’s much more convenient to write the check and mail it out in the envelope provided than to go through all the rigmarole of figuring out which browser today will actually open the freaking site (sometimes one, sometimes the other, and sometimes neither!) The only reason I’ve ever used the online payment was then I could be assured Qwest didn’t get my payment any sooner than they needed to. (Hey, after all I’ve been through, they don’t need it any sooner than the due date. I deserve to make more interest on my money than they do.)

On their end, however, it’s much more convenient. Having worked at places where bills were paid in two different ways, I can tell you that online payments are MUCH more convenient for the company you’re dealing with. If you send in a check, someone has to open the envelope (especially if you don’t use the postage-paid envelope and have one of another size) and then pull out the check and the payment slip. You can’t do too many at one time, for many people don’t write account numbers on their checks (I don’t, so I have nothing against those people), and you might mix up payments. (Not everyone pays the full amount every time.) You then have to figure out their account info and put the payment in. I know they do electronic checks now, so they at least don’t have to hand-stamp the backs anymore. Then you have to destroy the checks (unless you work somewhere they keep the physical payment information after the e-check has gone through).

Pulling electronic payments are much easier, more fool-proof, and seamless with the database. I can’t imagine that a company as big as Qwest wouldn’t have it so their payment information pulls from the payment center database and automatically applies it to each account in the database immediately and with very little (if any) human interception.

So the convenience fee is for, well, what exactly? The convenience of Qwest and other companies to higher fewer accounts receivable people to handle the payments? The convenience of Qwest to pull the information from one database into another without dealing with envelopes and paper cuts and e-checks that have to be run through? My convenience of trying to figure out even how to log in to my account from one day to the next, since things keep doing odd stuff on Qwest’s site (on all of my comps, too, not just this one)?

Good thing I can always do my own e-checks, I guess. I’m not sure how this saves Qwest any money, but they sure know how to tick off a long-term customer even more!

I emailed Steph back to find out exactly why this was instituted. She insists it was in place as of December 14th, but I have two payment emails that show I paid later in December and again in January and neither had a convenience fee attached to it.

“Convenience fees” are ridiculous and just another way to stick it to the people who pay your salary, companies (including airlines, utility companies, and anyone else who adds this ludicrous fee to any type of payment). You should be happy that I’m your customer and willing to pay you anything! This is where my choice as a consumer will probably come in very handy soon.

The Health Crap Shoot

A couple days ago, I wrote about a diagnosis I recently received from my doctor. After reading this and talking to some coworkers today, I realized that my story is much longer than just the past month.

Two of my coworkers and I were discussing doctors not listening to us when we talk about symptoms we are having. One of their uncles was just diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, mainly because he ignored his symptoms until he couldn’t any longer. The other was saying that she had gone to several doctors before her cancer was properly diagnosed. One doctor she went to listened to her symptoms and then had the nerve to take her hands in his, stroke them gently, and tell her that she was just so stressed out and needed to relax more.

This all took me back to all the years between my teen years and now. Every doctor I’ve been to for physicals (and there have been a few since I’ve lived in quite a few different areas over the years) has heard my symptoms and has known that there were “issues” with my health. Because no one ever said anything about the symptoms I gave, I assumed I was just normally abnormal or something and gave it no further thought. I am now 30 years old, and I’ve more than likely had this issue since my early teen years (12 or 13), given the symptoms I have. Think about how long it is that I’ve seen doctor after doctor through the years and not one has ever discussed my symptoms with me. Not one.

“I think some doctors don’t really listen to women when they feel something is wrong,” I said to my coworkers.

They both nodded.

“Okay, but listen to this,” I replied. I then told them about this new doctor I was going to. She was recommended to me by one of our school nurses (who goes to her), and I immediately set up an appointment to establish with her as soon as our insurance switched over to include her (which is why I had to wait until January).

I walked into her office and said, “Here I am. Here is my medical history. Here is my family’s medical history. Here are the things definitely wrong with me. Here are some symptoms I’ve had for years. Here are…”

“Wait a minute.” My doctor made me pause in my list of things that doctors have always asked and I’ve always answered. “These are your symptoms?”

“Ummmm…yeah. These are my symptoms.”

“Well, that’s not normal or right. I don’t like that. Let’s do something about it. Based on what you’ve told me, it could be this or this or this or this. Let’s do blood tests to see if it is any of those. I think, personally, that it is this#4, so I’m also going to order an ultrasound for you. Here’s what will happen at that appointment. If it is that, we really need to get your weight down, but it will be hard to lose weight. Here are some things you can do to work on that.”

“What about my feet?”

“That’s next on my list. Here is a doctor you can go see for your feet. He’s here on Tuesdays, so you’ll get in next Tuesday to see him. We’ll get your feet better and then you can get to work on exercising more.”

“Yay!” I yelled. (Not really, but my insides yelled, “Yay,” for me. I’m ready to get out and do things again.)

“Okay, when will I know more?” I really said.

“We’ll get back to you as soon as we have the ultrasound results.”

“Okay.”

“If it is this#4, which I really think it is, then we’ll need to do treatment for it. Are you planning to have children, or have you been trying to get pregnant?”

“No. We don’t want children,” I assured her.

“Okay, that makes treatment a bit easier on you. Here are your options: Options, options, options, options…”

“Hmmm…I don’t really like one of those options.”

“Well, we’ll discuss that more if we need to. I just want you to know what might be coming up and think about it, okay?”

“Okay.”

I left, made all the appointments, did the blood tests, had the ultrasounds done (have you ever drunk 36 oz of water in just about 10 minutes? If not, I don’t recommend it. You’ll be going to the bathroom for the rest of the day, and five minutes later, you’ll still feel as though you have to return to the facilities to pee again), and waited.

Two days after the ultrasound, someone from the doctor’s office called me.

“We have your test results. As the doctor suggested, it is this diagnosis. This blood test was high and the ultrasound showed what she figured it would. Combined with the other symptoms you’ve been having, here are your treatment options for the diagnosis: Options, options, options, options…,” the nurse said.

“Well…what about this last option? Here are a bunch of questions about it that I don’t understand. I don’t like any of the other options, but I’d like to know more about this one.”

“Hmmmmm…,” she said, “I’m not sure about that. Let me look it up. Ummmm…I can’t find it. Those are all very good questions, but I can’t find the information to give you. Hmmmm… Uhh… Oh! Look! The doctor is standing right here. She wants to talk to you!”

“Oh! Okay!” I am bewildered. I’ve never talked to my doctor on the phone before. I’ve worked with a lot of medical facilities with my jobs, and I can tell you freaking hard it is to talk to a doctor when you have legitimate business with them, let alone just to get your own freaking doctor on the phone for a question. Usually you ask for the doctor’s nurse and leave a message, praying that they really do ask the doctor your question and get back to you.

“Hello, jess!” my doctor said. “Did the nurse give you the test results?”

“Yes, she did.”

“I’d like to go over them again in case you have questions. Here are all of your result again. Here are your options again as well. Why didn’t you like the other options?”

“Well, here are the reasons for that.”

“Have you tried this or this or this or this?”

“Yes, yes, yes, and yes.”

“Hmmm…okay, let’s not go with that option then. Here is the best other option.”

“Yes, I had questions about that. Question, question, question?” I ask her.

“Oh, those are great questions to ask. Here are the answers. How do you feel about this option now?”

“I feel much better about it. How about we try this one and see how it goes?”

“Certainly, I’ll get that called over for you. I also want to see you in six months, no later, to check in with you and to see how you’re doing. We’ll also just see how the weight loss is going, just to keep track and keep accountability on that. You’ll have seen the other doctor by then, so hopefully you’ll be gaining ground on that, too, with your feet better,” she said.

“Okay, then. Thank you!”

“Don’t forget to come see me again in six months!”

“I won’t!”

(Don’t you love how specific I’m being? heheh)

I have never had a doctor who listened to my symptoms so closely and immediately zoned in on things that were happening. I’ve never had a hint that I had this disorder from any other doctor, even though I’ve had the symptoms most of my life. I’ve been told in the past that some of the symptoms were just due to stress from this or that or the other, or that they weren’t really symptoms of anything.

I’ve had doctors I’ve liked in the past, but I’ve never had a doctor I trusted this much or one that I truly felt really wanted me to be in the best health I can be in. Even the sports medicine doctor she sent me to was similar in that he listened to my symptoms, what I’d already done to alleviate the pain at all, and then gave me my options and told me what he thought about each. No nonsense and with a “let’s get this taken care of!” attitude.

One of my coworkers asked me for my doctor’s name and her practice location, because she wants to establish with her as well. I immediately wrote down her information and passed it on. I’m paying it forward, I guess, since another coworker suggested my doctor to me. Since this kind seems to be rare, I’m willing to pass patients on to her, because I know she’ll listen to them and actually take care of their health.

Doctors like this shouldn’t be so rare. Women shouldn’t be patted on the hand or the back or the head and told that their symptoms aren’t really symptoms of anything, so don’t worry your pretty little head, lady. Medical care shouldn’t be such a crap shoot.

More customer service kudos

Okay, I don’t know what’s been going on lately, but Neal and I have been having some good customer service lately. We recently placed an order at Domestications.com for an Adirondack loveseat to go on our deck area here at the new apartment. It was a good price for one, but still wasn’t cheap, so we were disappointed when we started to put it together and very few of the pre-drilled nail holes lined up. This didn’t deter us too much, but the splintering support piece certainly did. We soldiered on a bit longer until we had a front decorative support piece that had someone’s handwritten measurements and other numbers on it. On the front of the piece, that is, that shows quite a bit to the front of the loveseat. Big numbers.

We finally gave up and emailed Domestications.com and let them know how disappointed we were. This thing was a huge pain in the rear to ship to us (and had added handling charges because it was so large, heavy, and unwieldy). I explained that I would really like to just return it (we’d wrestled with it for a couple hours to even get to the point where we were and then had to turn around, undo all of our work, repack the darned thing, and get it ready to be shipped back for pick up from our secure apartment building) and get a complete refund, even on shipping. I had a response within an hour or two (first shock!) and was told that they’d let me return it for a complete refund or re-ship another item. I chose to return for refund, and they had FedEx pick it up a few days later. They said it could take up to 5-8 weeks for the refund to happen, but we had the refund back on our card within a week.

The second one was definitely above and beyond. I was attempting to order some items from methodhome.com and receive a free t-shirt I had been given a code for in the main recently. I only really liked one of the shirts, but I couldn’t get it to add to the shopping cart. I contacted the “customer service” for methodhome.com, but they said that they couldn’t help me and asked me to contact some place else, giving me a broken link. I asked for a new one, and followed that one to another customer service portal (apparently method uses a separate company for the shopping cart). I emailed them as well.

The above is not the good service, obviously, because it took forever for the non-customer service place to get back to me both times and then it took a long time for method to get back to me. After a little over a week of no contact, I went ahead and placed the order, putting another shirt in the cart for the free shirt instead. In fact, not only did I place my order, but I received it as well before hearing back about the cart error I kept getting. When I did hear back, I wasn’t expecting much, especially since I had already placed an order from them. I, however, was very wrong. The response was short and succinct: They were sending me the shirt free of charge. (Remember, though, that the shirt was going to be free anyway, but this was a second shirt, since I’d already placed the order and received it for the other items and the first shirt.) That was much more than I expected, although I was a bit disappointed that the customer service issues took so long to get  a response. (Although, to be honest, it always takes over a week each time to get a response back from method, just FYI, in case you ever need to get through to them. In the end, I’ve always had a good outcome, but it has always taken time to hear back.)

I’ve never had two good customer service happenings so close together, and I’m pretty excited that they were both pretty painless to deal with. One was just a bonus, but the other could have been a pretty big pain (and would have been a pretty big loss of money for us, considering how frugal we both are).

My Qwest is finished!

I’ve written about our trials with Qwest many times over the past year-and-a-half. First, we had issues with our account when we changed the speed and the customer service representative lied to us about what they were putting on the account. I contacted the BBB, and an executive customer service representative and I emailed back and forth (and talked on the phone) until the issue was straightened out (in our favor).

I then moved to a new apartment, and all was well for a year with no issues. Then I moved across the hall and instead of moving my service, they continued my old account and started a new one. Every month, I contacted the executive customer service rep I had first talked to with the first debacle. For reasons I still don’t understand, they couldn’t just close the new one and move my old one nor could they actually close the old one. Until yesterday, we STILL had two accounts going, even though we moved at in June of 2008. And then we moved again to the current apartment in July 2009. Yes, we still had both accounts going.

Shortly before we moved this last time, however, I discovered @TalkToQwest on Twitter. No, I don’t personally have a Twitter account, but I did discover on that page that they have an email address as well. I emailed them there and inquired about their possibly helping me, even without a Twitter account to advertise my woes. (Although, seriously, you should read some of the tweets that they in turn reach out to in order to help. Some people are really rude, and they just tweet back “How can I help you?” all nice-like. Wow.) Steph at @TalkToQwest returned my email pretty quickly and told me that she’d be happy to look into the issue. A week ago, she emailed me and was ecstatic that she thought that she had finally fixed it. I was pretty happy to be able to email her back tonight that, yes, she had fixed it after a year of someone else’s being unable to do so!

In fact, not only did she help us with that issue, but she helped get us a better price when we moved. We weren’t able to get the same speed as we had here, so she offered for us to either be let out of our contract or she could give it to us at a decent rate. My exec CS rep said that it would be $15.00 more than the @TalkToQwest representative had quoted me and that she could do nothing to lower it. We, of course, immediately jumped on the rate from Steph and thanked her profusely for all her help.

I guess it all boils down to this: If you have Qwest and you have any issues with Qwest (and want them actually resolved), check out @TalkToQwest and ask them from help, after attempting to go through “normal” CS channels (or maybe before going through normal CS channels, if time is of the essence). They will probably be able to help you in a kind, courteous, and quick manner.

Thanks to Steph and @TalkToQwest! (This is all from the kindness of my heart, because I am so amazed that it didn’t take Steph very long to figure out the problem AND to help us get a good rate when we moved. Otherwise, we probably would have just closed all our accounts and gone with someone else when we moved this last time.)

What are the odds?

So I was calling parents this morning and this afternoon to discuss an upcoming event with some of them. I dialed the third one on my list and it rings, rings, rings. Oh, it picked up! *click*

What? It hung up on me. I called the cell number again and the same thing happened. Okay, this is odd. I’m going to call the home phone number and just leave a message there.

Rinnng. Rinnng. Rinnng. *click*

“What?!” came a ticked off voice through the phone.

“Ummmm, good morning…this is Jessica with the — Office at —School.”

“Oh my goodness! I’m so sorry! I thought it was my friend who won’t quit calling me.”

We both laughed (the parent was mortified) and went on with the phone call business. At the end, she again apologized profusely, and I just assured her I completely understood.

Fast forward to later in the afternoon and I’m trying to finish up the list I have. (Between all the calls coming in and all the parents and students coming in, I had little time to make the calls in the morning.) One more student is on the list, so I find the home number and dial the phone.

Rinnng. *click*

“Oh, sorry about that. I dropped the phone when I picked up the baby.”

“Ummm, hello. This is Jessica with the — Office at —School.”

The woman laughs. “I’m sorry! I thought you were my husband calling back. I was just talking to him when I dropped the phone and it hung up on him.”

Really, though, what are the odds that I’d happen to call at the exact right moment to be mistaken for someone else not once, but twice today? Very odd. (And some people need to either invest in caller ID or just actually check it before they answer. I know I always do.)

Apropos

I finally went to get my hair cut last night. (This usually happens once a year, maybe twice if I’m feeling spunky that year. It hasn’t happened since November or December of last year, when I had between three and four inches chopped off.)

I generally wear my hair up (always at work), in a clip or a bun or pulled back completely somehow. I’ve been this way for a long time, actually, and usually feel better when my hair is up. My “letting my hair down” is actually putting my hair up. All of this to just say, I had my hair put up in a chignon as I walked toward the stylist who would be cutting my hair.

“Oh, I guess I should pull my hair down for you, eh?” I said, as I chuckled to realize my hair was still tightly bound.

“Oh my goodness! That’s a lot of hair! I wasn’t expecting that!” I had truly astounded my hair stylist with how long my hair was. For some reason, my hair grows really fast, so even though I’d had quite a bit cut off previously, it was all back and then some.

I have no idea why I felt compelled to write this here, to be honest, but I got a huge kick out of how surprised her face looked when I pulled out the clips and unwound my hair that I wanted to document it for some reason. *laughs* Possibly just self-indulgent, but what else is a blog for?

Keep Calm and Carry On

I actually used that phrase yesterday. You see, on Thursday, everyone where I worked had a huge bomb dropped on us. We didn’t know what to do with the news, but we knew something was off about it. Something was wrong. The news smelled. Stunk.

I was planning to use Thursday to get ready for the new school year, which begins on Monday, but instead I spent the entire day in meetings, even staying one-and-a-half hours past my normal endtime to attend yet another meeting with three members of the Board of Trustees. I got nothing done.

In the end, that meeting was worthless, and I knew it as soon as all three of them walked in the room. I knew it as soon as I saw their stony faces that they considered this a worthless meeting, and I started to consider it such as well. They weren’t going to change their minds and, as all three were businessmen, they all reverted to PR-speak of “no comment” and “I can’t answer that.”

One did say, however, my new phrase that gets me through the day, and I felt a strong desire to stand up and shout at him. “No, this isn’t what it is! You lie!” To me, this phrase reminds me of something that just is, that I can’t change, that cannot be made whole by my own power. This man has the power to correct this mistake and instead chose to ignore our pleas and to shrug off our cries for help to make this right. None of us in that room, except those three businessmen, could make this wrong decision right. To all the rest of us, it <i>is</i>what it is. It just is. We had no hand in the decision and we have no choice now that it’s made. To those three men and their 17 counterparts who refused to face us, that phrase doesn’t hold weight. They made this decision without input from us (or any other member of this community) and based their decision on falsehoods, outright lies.

When someone finds out their decision was based on untruths and misleading rumors, I expect that mistake to be remedied, but this was not to be. (By the way, they only told us on Thursday because someone, more than likely someone on the board since no one else knew about it, leaked the information to their family who in turn leaked it on Facebook. Our students knew before we did about this life-changing decision.)

Yesterday I decided I just needed to get back to work. No matter what, the kids are coming in on Monday, so I tried to get my mind on work. I got very little done, but at least it’s something. I’m not remotely ready for Monday, but it will come no matter what. For me, it is what it is, and now I must keep calm and carry on. It’s sad, in a way, that my work life is reduced to these catchphrases, but if I didn’t keep them in mind, I wouldn’t show up for work on Monday at all.

Updates!

Busy, busy! We’ve had a lot to do this summer, and I’m still working through the summer as well. In addition, we’re FINALLY moving from the pit-of-hell apartment (okay, it’s not a drug den — that I know of — but the management and quite a few other renters still suck for a variety of reasons). Our new apartment is closer to where I work (as in walk/bike to work close), we have a garage, a storage area, and a bigger apartment in general with a balcony to sit out on. There are tons of other perks, but those are the biggies for us (in addition to actually good managerial staff).

Antiques Roadshow went extremely well. I’ve never been in such a humongous yet well-organized event before. We found out that the lithograph we took (in addition to two smaller things) is indeed real and from the 1890s. We were super excited to hear that, obviously, since it’s such a wonderful lithograph and we LOVE it. Nicholas Lowry appraised it for us, as we had hoped during our time in the queue. We’d seen him on the show before, and we knew he’d be fun to talk to. He gave us a hard time for appraising a wedding gift (insurance purposes! We have a rider on our insurance, and we wanted to be sure the lithograph was actually real before continuing to pay that) and also quite a scare.

NL: Tell me about this.

Us: blah blah wedding gift

NL: *raises eyebrows and strokes his chin* You’re appraising a wedding gift?

Us: *babbling* Yes, we wanted to know more about the artist. Also, insurance purposes!

NL: *laughs and then sobers up* It looks really new.

Us: Uh. *can’t think of anything to say* We just wanted to know more about it.

NL: Good news, though. It’s not! It’s a well-known lithographer, although this is not his most famous piece, which is …. Yours is from the 1890s…

[just writing the important stuff here]

Us: Yay!

And so on.

We also took Neal’s grandfather’s (whom Neal has never known, as he died tragically when Neal’s dad was a child) Japanese katana from WWII and a metronome of Neal’s that he received from his grandmother when he was learning how to play the violin. The metronone is from the 1920s, which was exciting to know, and was made in Paris, France.

Anyway, good stuff. The producers and staff of AR are amazingly friendly and helpful. We saw one producer come over give his headphones to the girl behind us in line, so she could listen in on the appraiser and guest about the guitar they were then filming. Her boyfriend collects guitars, and she had been trying to get closer, but was told to get back. She asked a volunteer about it, but he couldn’t hear either, so he asked a producer who handed over the headphones (a Martin worth $5000 that was kept in a basement closet). The volunteer also gave us some info on other things around the place, such as a huge Japanese-made table that was worth $25,000 to $30,000 and the even bigger wardrobe that the owner thought was from the 1800s — but it was actually a fake.

We entered and exited almost exactly three hours apart, and this included standing in a huge line (that kept moving pretty quickly; I don’t think I stood in one place for more than five minutes the entire time), getting the general appraisal information (where we needed to go to have our items actually appraised), finding the first two lines (arms, to talk to this guy, and music, to talk to this guy, which were luckily both short lines), standing for a bit in the prints line for the lithograph, walking around to check out the scene (and look for the Kenos, whom we did not see), and then give our couple bucks at the Feedback Booth (the girls in front of us will probably be on television: They had prepared a song!) All in all, a wonderful time, and I would recommend it to anyone!

In other news, our saga with Qwest continues. We are STILL getting billed for our old service (yes, folks, we have actually passed the year mark as of a month ago) and we just found out we can’t get the same level of service at the new place. I’ve luckily found Qwest’s twitter (no, I don’t have a twitter account, but they have an email and will help you if you email them), which has been more helpful than my “executive customer service” representative from the BBB case. If you need to contact them, I suggest emailing the address on their twitter (or @talktoqwest on twitter) and talking to Steph. She’s been helping us with both the move (and she got us a GREAT price on the service, which was much less than we have been quoted by several other people, which made me happy, since it’s a slower speed than we currently have at this apartment) and with trying to figure out the continual billing at our old address. So far, no one has been able to actually stop the statements, but I’m hoping Steph can get behind the issue.

Our big move date (i.e., moving the furniture, since we’ll have all the smaller stuff over there already) is this Saturday. I’m looking forward to the peace and quiet of our new home! Picnics and grilling out! Riding my bike! (We can’t have bikes at this current apartment at all, even outside, and we aren’t allowed to use any grills anywhere on the premises. Work is going well for me, and Neal has the summer off (forcibly, since he didn’t get a contract for the summer, but I think it’s been good for him to have a break). His contract for next year is only for the first semester so far, at 75%, but I’m hoping he’ll get picked up for the spring semester, too. We’re keeping that in our prayers, along with a few other personal things, but otherwise life is pretty good today.

(We’ll see what happens tomorrow, now that I’ve actually written that out.)

“People keep giving us stuff today!”

Today we decided to veg about a bit (since we haven’t had a free weekend day in a while) and then go to a movie that we’d been hoping to see for a while. We then decided to find a few new summery shirts for me (and a white button-down to go with my skirt for my employee/trustee dinner at a particular-dress-code dining establishment coming up this week) and afterwards go to Starbucks for Neal to do some work and for me to play with my DS.

After the movie we decided to stop off at Pizza Hut and grab something to eat. We decided to get the garlic cheesebread and a medium pepperoni pizza. As soon as we’d ordered, the waitress said, “Oh, do you want to do this? It’ll save you money,” and she pointed at a meal deal on the back of the menu that included the salad bar and a medium Lover’s Line pizza with two drinks. Neal and I decided we’d rather have the garlic cheese bread (I’ve had their salad bar a few times and it’s never gotten any better — and it wasn’t that good in the first place) and she offered to substitute the salad bar with a double batch of garlic bread. We debated it, since we didn’t want that much food, but we finally decided we could take half the meal home, especially since we were saving quite a bit with the deal (and even getting the double batch of garlic bread instead of the single and a Lover’s Line pizza instead of a single topping was still cheaper with this meal deal). We went with the Pepperoni Lovers, too.

When the garlic bread came, we realized that there wasn’t any marinara sauce with it. It has been a couple years since we’d orderd it, but I was positive it had come with it before. When the waitress came back with our drinks, I asked her for some sauce. She said, “Oh, it technically doesn’t come with the meal anymore and it costs a dollar, but I can get some for you for free.” I said that it’d be fine for us to pay for it, but we did not see it on the bill anyway when it came.

Throughout the meal, Neal and I kept returning to the fact that the waitress looked very familiar, but neither of us could place her, and we never did figure it out. I’m still not sure if we knew her, or if she looked like someone else or what. We were very surprised that she seemed to go out of her way to make sure we got a good deal and even gave us something for free, and we tipped generously (and in addition to the generous tip added the $1.00 she had saved us as well). I realize that what we would’ve tipped on that $1.00 wasn’t a significant amount really, but she still saved us money on the total bill (including the meal deal and the marinara), which really would have lowered her tip due to being a lower amount to base our percentage on. Yeah, it wasn’t a huge amount, but it was enough to make me appreciate her honesty and want to give her the total tip she would have had with the original amount and a bit more.

After looking for shirts (for the record, I still abhor shopping, especially clothes shopping), we ended up at Starbucks, mainly because they aren’t usually super busy on the weekends (but during the week? Hoo-boy…) and they also have these two super comfy chairs that I like to lounge in (well, just one of them. Neal sits in the other.) We both ordered our usual drinks and one of the works asked if we minded if she mopped near us — not if she mopped where we were (I even offered to lift my feet, and she said she didn’t want to disturb us), but if she could mop somewhere NEAR us. It was over an hour until closing, and she didn’t want us to think she was rushing us out the door. Okay, that’s fine. I go back to playing and Neal goes back to reading. A little bit later, she came up to us with two full-sized pastries (a lemon tart and a huge rice cereal treat) and said, “Would you two like some samples?” We, of course, agreed, and she said, “The owner is gone, so I get to decide on the size of the samples!” We all laughed, and Neal and I enjoyed the “samples.”

I told Neal we should run out and buy a lottery ticket and maybe visit a few other places tonight to see if other people will give us free stuff. I mean, we didn’t ask for anything free (or, really, anything other than some marinara that we would have paid for this once and then never got again once we knew), and I’m really not sure what was going on tonight.

I’m obviously not going to complain. I’m going to give kudos to those two places for making us feel special on a very unspecial day. It’s nice to get that feeling every once in a while these days, and it definitely doesn’t happen all that often. (And I won a free print from one of my favorite Etsy sellers who does freehand glass engraving, although she has recently switched over to sandblasting the designs on the glass pieces. She did tell me that she’d freehand any design I wanted in the future, if I let her know I wanted it hand-drawn and not sandblasted. More wonderful customer service, and she’s just a super nice person in general, which is why I also read her blog regularly.)

I don’t need people to give me free stuff for me to like the customer service, and just the little extra in telling us about deals and specials would be good enough for me. Tonight, several employees of different places went above and beyond their general call of duty for no apparent reason. It’s nice to see that this kind of thing can still happen even in these tough times. It reminds Neal and me that we need to be just as giving even when it hurts a little bit.

More customer service (some good, some bad)

Okay, remember when we moved and then had problems with Qwest? No? Okay, here‘s a refresher…and here…and here. As a quick reminder: They were supposed to move our service from one apartment to another one in the same building. Another apartment literally right next door to the one we were in. Instead, they charged us to set up a new account and kept billing us for the old account. And kept billing us. And kept billing us. As a matter of fact, they STILL have not closed the old account. The switch was supposed to happen the last week of June 2008. It is NOW almost the last week of MARCH 2009. Almost nine months later and we are still fighting this. Still. Qwest, when will you finally just CLOSE that old account? (The rep I’m in contact with said she can’t figure out why it hasn’t been closed. Heck, they don’t even listen to their corporate customer care reps. Egads.)

But on to the good: In December we rented a car from Enterprise to visit family. When Neal got the car home and we opened the trunk to put our bags and presents in, we noticed some moulding was loose on the rear panel of the car, but we didn’t have time to go back to Enterprise. (Yes, I know.) We dropped the car back off on Sunday and received a call on Monday that there was damage to the rear, as though the car had been backed into. It hadn’t, and we knew it. We disputed the issue and were told that we’d receive a call from someone in the Cities office regarding the dispute process. Instead, a week later on January 5th, we received a bill for about $800 and and pictures of the “damage” including a “dent,” although the pictures showed nothing that could be seen: no dent, no damage other than the loose moulding that we had explained. Neal called the person on the notice and explained that we were disputing the issue. We both felt that we were getting the rap for someone else’s damage on the car, possibly because the other person didn’t or couldn’t pay up. The Enterprise rep told us that he’d look into past damage reports and get back to us within a “few days” if they denied our dispute.

So far, so good, right? So why am I writing about it now? In March? Because on Friday, March 13th, we received a call from our insurance company that said Enterprise had filed a claim against us with them. Yes, almost three-and-a-half months later, they finally send it through, possibly hoping we’d just give up and let the insurance pay out on it. I mean, no skin off our nose, right? (Except possibly higher premiums, depending on the final cost of the “repairs.”)

I was livid. No contact for this long and then you expect me to let my insurance pay with no argument? I don’t think so. I immediately went to The Consumerist to find what info they had on Enterprise’s executives and then did some more researching on other corporate email addresses to launch an EECB (Executive Email CarpetBomb) before we left for the Cities (this time no rental car due to this exact issue) for the rest of my Christmas present (how timely!) I explained what had happened and that we’d been loyal to Enterprise since both of us had been able to rent cars, especially during before we had married and were driving back and forth to see each other and even now that we have to drive states away to see friends and family. I told them that unless the matter was actually looked into and we received some kind of contact, even if it were to tell us we were still going to have to pay for it, then we would never rent from Enterprise again (even though they have the best rates and, until now, the best customer service we’d seen).

On Monday, Neal received a call that apologized for the error and told him that we were not at fault. The person promised the information in writing as well. True to his word, we received a letter today that again apologized and explained that the damage on the car was actually from an accident four weeks before we rented the car. The damage simply hadn’t been completely repaired, for some reason, and we were the unlucky ones in the interval to take the fall. He apologized for the misunderstanding and the error and let us know that they were reviewing procedures with staff to make sure this doesn’t happen again. (Seriously, though, what a break-down in communication for this to go on so long and obviously not be our error. Why couldn’t the first guy just actually do his job and look back into it like he said he would?)

I’m pleased that this had a good outcome, and we will definitely rent from Enterprise again in the future. I’m still a bit upset with the particular local office we rented from (there are two) and the corporate office in the Cities, though, that they didn’t consider us valuable enough customers to actually do a real check on the car’s history.

Qwest: C’mon and fix these silly issues!

Enterprise: Thank you for being so prompt and for doing the right thing. It took several months to do it, but it turned out all right in the end.