Joining the list

[Anonymous]

RAGE NOTICE:

I’m now joining the list of people who have forgotten to pay bills and been threatened with collection agency. But it wasn’t a paper bill, it was Bell Mobility and it was an electronic bill. I’ve been complaining about this since Sept of 2010 – every time they send me a notification that my bill is ready for viewing I can’t log in, or I can log in but when I go to view the bill something happens, it’s usually a server error. They apologised a year ago for making some changes that screwed things up but it still happens.

(I’m not a computer novice)

So I wait a day, and try again, no luck. Repeat another day. Well crap, I am a busy person and can’t keep trying day after day, then my emailbox fills up and it gets forgotten.

Collection letter dated Nov 24th (contact us within 5 days or turned over to collectio agency), didn’t hit their mailroom until Dec 1st, hit our mailbox Dec 6th, all hell breaks loose at home.

Tried to call them last night – their letter says accounts receivable hours from 8:30 until 6 pm, phone says 9-5. Did chat with an agent online who couldn’t do a damn thing but did give me an email address to complain to, which I did.

Tried again at 9 am this morning. Actually talked to an agent who told me there was a lien put on my husband’s name on the account. WHAT? It took 4 phone calls and a lot of raging before I finally got permission (my husband named me to act on the account but we had switched to a prepaid and my name wasn’t on it) to talk to a supervisor. She calmed me down, wrote all of my concerns down, said there was no lien, etc.

I am a accountant, I treat bills like hot potatoes, and when I get one, I go online and set it up for future payment with online banking. But I refuse to pay anyone if I don’t get a bill, so I got caught with their useless web interface.

We’ve decided to bite the bullet, buying smartphones, getting rid of home internet and landline and Bell. we’re already using VOIP at work.

I am also very frustrated with all the stupid passwords and usernames that I have to use, and I’m about ready to try a fingerprint reader.

End of rage. Thanks for listening. Or NOT.

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[Wgreen]

Great rant…

It seems to me that, in many regards, the digital revolution has been a nightmare for ADDers: digital “solutions” are frequently counterintuitive and very unforgiving. That means they can be extremely frustrating. And “frustrating” and ADD don’t get along very well.

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[Anonymous]

Maybe this is good for a laugh, I need to laugh at how pathetic I am right now …..

My husband decided to send me a text message yesterday from Toronto on his cellphone. We normally don’t use texting, but we’re on the prepaid plan now so it’s cheaper. I tried twice to send him a reply back, all I wanted to say was “go home”. Could I figure it out? I guess by default it was the auto-fill option where it tries to guess at what you want to say, I ended up saying something like gmmmmm illlllll then got out of the screen, changed it to alpha only and still had problems. I ended up calling him on the cellphone.

It’s very frustrating because I am a very fast touch typist and that stupid little phone got the better of me 👿

This morning he showed me how simple it was, that you just keep typing regardless of what the phone comes up with, and eventually it will suggest a word. He said “I figured it out the first time” – grrrrrrr why I am the stupidest person in the world? Nobody ever showed me how to do it!

Sigh

Usually I am pretty good with technology, but I guess we got a little behind with the smartphone revolution.

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[caper]

I found bell mobility sucks when it comes to customer service.

Now I have an unlocked phone with a cheap prepaid texting package. If my current provider pisses me off, I can just buy a new SIM card ($5-$10) from another provider and switch.

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[Anonymous]

that sounds good, caper.

Another funny for today, got home after getting an antibiotic prescription from the drugstore, we wanted to go out and pick up a few things at the grocery store. I know that I brought my cellphone home, but I couldn’t find it. My husband said “call yourself from our home phone”, so I did. I could hear the cellphone ringing faintly. I walked around the living room, foyer, still faintly ringing. My husband said “maybe it’s in the van” so we called it again. Finally I realized that it was in a sweater pocket underneath my winter coat. Hopeless.

ADD stole my cellphone!

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[kc5jck]

We’ve been calling our phones for years to help find them. It’s too bad they can’t take a picture of where they are and send it to us.

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[Anonymous]

I was actually wearing the sweater at the time and the phone was set on vibrate and ring.

kc, I need a GPS to find my cellphone.

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[Anonymous]

gets prickly when you don’t have a home phone and the cell has gone missing. i once had the “brilliant” idea of having someone else call my phone, but I need to have a phone to call someone to call my phone. lol. there is actually a way to use smart phone gps and track it down . I find it eventually.

life is too complicated. too many things to keep track of!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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[billd]

Wow, folks. I gotta thank you for this whole thread and all the posts. ME ME ME. I feel MUCH less alone and stupid now. I’m not crazy.

THANK YOU.

On the electronic billing – I need to SMASH into the heads of the geniuses who figure that a single email sent if enough and good. And when I find the 2×4 to use to smash some sense into their heads, I’ll drive some bolts into it before I swing it.

here’s why I say all this:

I’m an IT person, (auto tech by training and love, but IT for the last 25 years). I’m damned good, VERY good. I know these things pretty much inside and out. I know networks, I know web and email security better than most security professionals. I know email well and how it works.

We’ll just say I know computers and move on……….

RELYING SOLELY ON EMAIL for communication is stupid, just stupid. Email is not 100% reliable. In fact, I’d say less than 90% reliable.

Over 2/3 of the worlds email traffic is SPAM, PHISHING, SCAMS, junk, etc. OVER 2/3. Filters are not perfect. SPAM filters block a lot of good email (email from our insurance agent was blocked at the ISP level and it took a couple weeks to figure out why we’d not gotten a message from our agent)

Email sent LOCALLY in the state government system here – from one building to another, my computer to the ITE Exchange servers to another computer can take hours. I could shoot a spit ball across the street faster.

there are simply too many “what-if’s” to say “you didn’t respond to our first message so you are negligent”. Ah, no. Good chance that message never made it.

I’ve got more than 6 email accounts I deal with for home, business, the forum I run and so on. One of those gets over 100 spam messages a day THROUGH the ISPs filters!! Now every day I must sort through that mess just for that ONE account, and make sure I don’t delete GOOD messages. I have to daily search the spam filters of other accounts to make sure that good messages were not blocked.

There are better systems, really there are, and one day I might use them, but they are all work, all imperfect, and bad things happen to good messages.

I’ve also dealt with the hassles of attempting to log in to complex banking interfaces, and those like you mention. I’ve never looked at our cell phone bills because of the complexity of getting into them. They are all auto-pay, and unless the amount each month is different by a big amount from the prior bill, we simply figure it was ok.

We do auto-pay for nearly everything. some come right out of our checks – truck payment, insurance, etc. House payment we don’t because they want $5.95 a month for that service!! (plus we like to pay extra each month and the online version won’t allow that easily.)

Yeah, I’m an IT professional, I make my living using and working with computers, but I HATE what we’ve become, what we’ve done to ourselves with them.

IMO, To dun you based on electronic communication only would or should never stand up in court. I’d testify to that as a professional witness.

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[Anonymous]

I probably don’t need you, bill, but that’s good to know. My bailiff friend says they would have had to get a writ of execution to process a lien, so that was just ignorant nonsense on behalf of the first agent I spoke to. I told the supervisor that if I’d been a senior with a heart condition and heard that, I’d have been on the floor with a heart attack. As it was, I kept my husband off the phone because he couldn’t control his rage. I was loud, firm, resolved, but clean with my language (not my thoughts, believe me)

Today, the complaint email address I was given by the chat agent the night before came back saying that they no longer respond by email but invited me to chat online with an agent 👿

😥 👿 basically, there’s nobody to complain to.

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[Author]

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