perzephone | Cutting Up the Cards

Tonight I went through & cancelled all but two of our credit cards. Yay me! It was fun, in a way. I called Bank of America - told them I wanted to cancel my card, asked about some way of lowering the interest rate, all in all it took me about 5 minutes to close the account. Called Chase Manhattan - took maybe 3 minutes to close the account.

Then I called Capitol One. No hassle my assle. The first person, Duke, spent a good deal of time trying to cajole me out of closing my accounts and ended up hanging up on me. So I called back & got a girl. I explained that I had already heard the 'don't close your account' speech and that calling them was like trying to cancel an AOL membership. She ended up transferring me to a recording that would not recognize either account number. So I called back again & got disconnected. Called again, same thing. It was kind of funny how I got disconnected after punching in the last four digits of my social security number... almost as if someone looked at their phone, saw those four digits and said, "Oh hell no..." So I called back again & got another girl. I asked to speak with a supervisor. She said she needed to know why I was calling because chances were she could help me, since she was, after all, a Senior Account Supervisor. I told her I had already spoken to two Senior Account Supervisors who could not honor my request, so obviously I needed someone with a little more authority. She kept wanting to know what I wanted to do - I told her all I was trying to do was close my accounts. She immediately launched into the spiel that I'd already heard - twice. I interrupted & said, "Look, I'm not trying to yell at you, I've worked on your side of the counter and I know how it is. But I've talked to two Senior Account Supervisors, been disconnected twice, your computer won't recognize my account number and I've wasted like, a half hour of my time so far. I called Bank of America, asked them to cancel my account and they did - took like 3 minutes..." and then I found myself telling hold music about Chase Manhattan. She had transferred me - somewhere. The woman who picked up the phone cancelled my accounts, both of them. Took like, 33 minutes to get to the person who could help me. I never once yelled, used profanity or raised my voice, either. But I was annoyingly persistent - being on the other side of the counter has definitely taught me a few things about receiving service.

Rob kept trying to take the phone from me, but he just didn't understand how badly I wanted to speak with those people again... I mean, I really wanted to talk to them. Hell, I would have kept calling all night if that's what it had taken. I'm glad they realized that I would keep calling before I actually had to.

Then I called Lane Bryant. Their account cancellation process is all automated. I didn't even have to talk to a human being. I wish I had called Lane B. before I called Capitol One. Then I could have told the last girl, "Look, I just called Lane Bryant and didn't even need a human being to close my account!"

Now it's all paying & no spending. Yay.