I'm so sick of huge corporations screwing over little people like me. I'm so sick of automated bureaucracies making the simplest tasks near impossible. I'm about to give up cell phones, cable tv and cable internet entirely. I don't think being able to communicate with the outside world is worth having to bend over and take it from these people.

Here's the latest in the never-ending saga of Me Being Screwed Over By Communications Companies.

A couple weeks ago I received my cell phone bill from a company we'll call Horizon Tireless. It happily informed me that my last bill is past due, and I now have a five dollar late fee on this bill. At the bottom of the same bill, it said "Do not send payment. Your balance will be automatically deducted from your credit card at the end of the month." Checking the previous month's bill confirmed what I already knew; it said the same thing at the bottom.

I called their customer service line, I line I'm unfortunately becoming way too familiar with at this point. I explained everything to the girl, and she told me that my credit card had expired. Only, it hadn't. Well, whatever, just, change my credit card information, and be done with it. She did so, and told me everything should be fine. The crisis was averted, there's no extra charge on my bill, and we can all go back to living our lives.

Until today.

I received ANOTHER notice from Horizon Tireless telling me my account is STILL past due and threatening to disconnect my phone.

Let's back up a minute here. See, I set up automatic payment so I didn't have to do anything or worry about paying each month, and especially so this sort of thing wouldn't happen. Suddenly, not only am I dealing with it, but I'm dealing with it every two weeks. Plus, it's not just sitting down to write a check and walking to the mailbox anymore; I'm spending ONE AND A HALF HOURS on the phone with them. Every two weeks. So yeah, it's not a little thing anymore. I'm mad, and I have reason to be.

Three calls each give me different "solutions." Two of them told me they couldn't help me, despite this being Ver, excuse me, Horizon's screwup in the first place. One person told me to call #PMT, which, I'm sorry, only gave me the option to make a one-time payment.

I tried going to the website and seeing if I could fix it there. This is what I got:

Set Up Auto Bill Pay - Declined
You are already enrolled in an Automatic Bill Payment program. To enroll in the online Auto Bill Pay program, you must contact Customer Service at 1-800-922-0204 or by dialing *611 from your cell phone (airtime free) to remove your account from the existing Automatic Bill Payment program. As soon as your account is no longer associated with the existing payment program, you may come back online and sign up for Auto Bill Pay.
Thank you.

See that number up there? Can you guess what number that is? Yes. It's THE NUMBER I ALREADY CALLED. The ones that told me THEY COULDN'T HELP ME. And since when does a service have TWO automatic payment services? That seems a bit excessive if you ask me.

The last guy actually helped me. To make up for all the inconvenience, he deleted this month's bill. He just got rid of it. It's gone. I no longer have to pay it. Then he found the right number to call (after a couple failed attempts), stayed on the line with me to make sure he'd given me the right number, and even CALLED ME BACK to make sure everything was solved.

I'm still in shock. I'm sitting here with my jaw on the floor. Someone in a customer service department actually provided a service to a customer. Cedric from um, Horizon Tireless, thank you. All you others, really, quit your day job. NOW.

After all that, I'm tired, I'm upset, and I'm very very hungry. I could have had dinner two hours ago, but no. Instead I've been fighting the Man. On a Saturday night.

listening to: stupid customer service representatives
in my sink: the same thing as last post.