the smack factor

I’m poor.  Yes, I live in New York, New York and yes, i’m poor.  No, I never blame THAT for my poorness.  Currently I blame my unemployment on it, but usually I blame my poor money management skills on my poorness.  either way, when I looked at my bank account this morning, I was pissed off to see that i was overdrawn, with money SITTING THERE in my savings.  The reason I was overdrawn?  Because I’m lazy and I forgot to disconnect my Vonage.  Oh honey, i’ve been paying for Vonage for a good 4 months without using it.  yeah, lazy.  Now is not the time to be lazy, right?  One thing at a time — must talk to bank about why why why they’re not being a good bank and pulling the money from my savings.   But first, let’s disconnect Vonage.

I call.  It goes a little something like this:

• your call is important to us, which is why we’re going to be total dicks and keep you on hold due to our incredibly influx of calls asking for disconnection.
• Choose a number from our menu and we’ll transfer you to someone who will transfer you to someone else and then put you on hold… FOR 5-10 minutes.
• For 5-10 of your daytime minutes, cellphone user, we will pepper you with commercials on Vonage’s greatness… even though you selected “disconnect my service” from the menu.  Now, I sort of applaud that effort because maybe some people were really on the fence — and then the hold tactics convinced them they were wrong and they hung up in a panicked guilt sweat.
• Your Vonage representative will then ask you millions of verification questions that you have already forgotten because you’ve moved 3 times in the past 7 months and then calmly scold you, using your Ms+last name, saying this information is needed for verification purposes.
• Then, you’re on hold.  Again.  for at least 2 minutes.  Money, plinking into a pile of doody.
• Then, “before we disconnect your service” we’re going to remind you of all the great services, remind you that we value your customer-itude, and remind you that once you disconnect you’re dead to us.
• what’s the reason for disconnecting “no reason”, in order to fully record the iteraction we’re going to ask in multiple phrases if you’re sure.
• “Please just disconnect my service - quickly, we’re using my daytime minutes”

Disappointed, she bid me farewell.  I don’t know if Vonage reps are lonely and in need of companionship, but the least appropriate time to keep someone on hold, hold, and then hold again is when you’re trying to retain their service.  I’d be more inclined to sign up again in the future if they had bing bam boom shut my service down happily and with a “see you soon I hope” buh bye.