Cell phones

They are sometimes more bother than they are worth. Today I got a call from my cell phone company, Telus, a Canadian cell phone provider. (I have a Canadian cell phone, while my younger siblings have pay-as-you-go phones from down here. We use my phone for calling home and that sort of thing. It used to be more convienient, but I'm thinking more and more these days like I should switch to something better. Kind of hard now that I'll only be around here until May, though.) They informed me that I needed to pay my bill or else my cell service would be cut off. I politely informed them that my bill had been paid yesterday. The lady I was talking to snootily told me I hadn't. I told her I had. She told me to go make sure and then call them back because this was "a VERY important matter." I agreed that it was an important matter and told them I didn't need to check and make sure because I knew the bill had been paid. She told me to check anyway and hung up on me after giving me the number to call back. I was grumpy. I made some phone calls, verifying that my bill had, in fact, been paid. I was quite annoyed at the fact that making these calls was using up my precious minutes. I began to despise Telus. It felt weird despising them because I've always, until today, maintained that they are one of the better cell providers in Canada.

When I had all the info I needed, I tried phoning back. The number wasn't right. My annoyance level rose. I found a number online and tried it out. It took me to one of those awful voice verification systems and I spent more of my minutes trying to navigate through that. The voice verification lady didn't always understand what I was saying because of the anger edging into my voice. Finally I was put in a queue to talk to a real, live human being. I was told by the ultra-friendly voice verification lady that I would have to wait about 18 minutes to talk to this real, live human being. I was not impressed. But then she informed me that I could punch my number in and hang up the phone, then when my turn in line came, my phone would ring and I would be able to talk to the real, live human. I opted for this plan. Finally, my phone rang and the lovely fake lady said I was next in line. Then the wonderful real, live human tones filled the phone. I told the lady (who talked with a semi-hard-to-understand accent) about my troubles with Telus and she asked me a bunch of questions. Then finally she realized I was talking to the wrong department (not sure why the voice verification couldn't have figured that one out) and transferred me to some other office. Fortunately I didn't have to wait another 18 minutes for another human being. The second lady also had that same hard-to-understand accent and asked me some more questions. Finally she asked a question I didn't know and told me I had to find that out before she could finalize anything.

To make this long story shorter, I had to phone around some more to find out the answer to her last question and then had to call back (which was another process because the number the last lady had given me was wrong, too). Luckily I tried a different number than the first time and got to speak to a real, live human being much sooner than the last time. This real, live human being was super nice and helped me out so much better than any of the other three (four if you count the voice verification lady) ladies. Finally I got everything sorted out and was told that I'd still have my phone service. Wow, what a lot of work just to be able to use a phone...