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Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Welcome to the C.C.S. Patrol!

Welcome to a new feature of The Learning Curve--the C.C.S. Patrol! What does C.C.S. stand for, you ask? Well, I'll tell you. It stands for Crappy Customer Support! You would think that with the cost of everything going up and up and up, you'd think the quality of service would at least stay the same, wouldn't you? WRONG! More and more, companies want you to leave a voice mail message, or email them, or leave a message on their website.

I can see it now . . . . "Dear Company X, I am finding it impossible to access your website. Therefore, as requested, I am contacting you via your website (which I cannot access) to report the problem."

Well, duh . . .

My latest adventure? I got an email this morning, "from Twitter" telling me that the password to my Twitter account had been compromised and I needed to follow "this link" to reset my password. Pretty sure that's not from Twitter, but I'd still like to contact them to confirm that and give them a heads-up in the process.

So, I call the only Twitter phone number I can find (NOT toll-free, just long distance), only to get a recording informing me that "Twitter does provide customer support by phone at this time . . . ." Then, it tells me to report any problem through my Twitter account!

Well, duh . . . .

Oh! It did tell me that if I knew my party's extension, I could enter it at any time. I suppose I COULD call them back and just start entering extension numbers at random, until I got a person who would listen. Let's see, most extension numbers are combinations of 3 or 4 digits. Hmmm . . . .

I wouldn't be so concerned, except this scammer (if that is indeed what it is) had BOTH my email address and my Twitter username. That smells to me like Twitter may have been hacked!  WORD OF WARNING!

Soooo . . . what experiences would YOU like to report to the C.C.S. Patrol? Post here, and we'll tackle the corporate "Routing System Goliaths" together.

TUNE IN NEXT TIME: When I'll tell you a trick I've discovered for outfoxing the "speak or enter" instructions.