Customer Care.

I'm a conspiracy theorist; I'm suspicious of most people; I don't trust most people as far as I can spit (WdC and friends excepted); and, it's my firm belief that many customer care-type people are hired specifically for their lack of understanding of the written word and for their lack of common sense.

*My apologies and sincere thanks in advance to anyone who works in customer service and does a great job of helping their customers. You are truly a rare breed.
Btw, I used to work in customer service 20+ years ago, so I know what it's like to deal with the public on a daily basis... That's why I don't work in customer service anymore! LOL*

Here then, are 2 prime examples to illustrate. One took place yesterday, the other today:

The Yearly Fire Inspection
I have lived in this apartment for 10 years, and every year the property manager does a fire inspection of everyones apt. It consists of him poking my smoke detector (sd) to make it go beep-beep and checking that my apt door closes properly. All of which takes a grand total of about 24 seconds. This year due to c-19, he decided it's too risky to go into everyones apt, so he sent a form to each tenant requesting that we check our own sd's and return the completed form to him.

This would not be a problem except for 2 things:
1. The ceilings here are higher than your average ceiling, 9 or 10 ft high, I'm guessing.

2. The form has a spot for the sd's expiry date.

Now, as you may or may not know, I'm 5'3" and I don't own a ladder and even if I did I'm not steady enough to climb one. So, I promptly emailed Mr Property Manager advising him of my height problems and inability to reach my sd test button. I also told him I don't know where the expiry date is located.

He thoughtfully wrote back suggesting I use a broom handle to reach the test button, and the expiry date is conveniently located on the side of the sd.

So, as you can clearly see, this example illustrates "Lack of Logic". Picture it - my 2 ft arm holding a 3 ft broom handle. While it does enable me to barely reach and poke the detector, if I'm standing on my toes, it does nothing to bring my eyes any closer to the sd so I can see (let alone read) the expiry date. If the date had been on the bottom of the sd my ingenious idea of using the zoom lens on my camera to see it would have worked like a charm. But no, some brilliant person thought it best to place it on the side.

And besides that, if the expiry date (I never knew sd's had one) is so important wouldn't it be sensible of the property manager to keep the date on file for each apt? Since he's been doing this fire inspection every year for the last 10 years you'd think that either he or the fire dept would have a record of it someplace. No?

This whole smoke-detector-expiry-date thingy smells like a c-19 prank. I can just see the property manager and the fire chief giggling their mask-covered faces off, imagining us tenants doing acrobatics trying to find the nonexistent expiry date.

The Great Log-in Mystery
Today, I decided to place an order online from one of my favorite real-life stores. This is only the second time in about a year that I ordered something from this site. I love the store, but the website always gives me problems. And today was no exception.

It had been long enough, that I had forgotten my password. So I made a few attempts at guessing it, to no avail. Then I decided to reset my password by having a “reset” link emailed to me. The computer told me that my email was not registered in it's system. This was the same problem I had a year ago. I tried once more and after pressing a dizzying assortment of buttons (including a slew of the always annoying confirm-you're-not-a-robot picture puzzles) I finally manged to log-in. I placed my order, filled out the name and delivery address, paid for it, and received an order confirmation in my email inbox. Success!

Then I wanted to go back and log-in again to confirm to myself that I knew the correct password so I could confidently write it down for future reference. I typed in my email, then carefully typed in my password and got... no account found with that email. WHAT? Am I on candid camera or in the twilight zone? I could not believe it was happening again. I tried to reset my password and once again I didn't exist in their system. I tried one last time just to make sure I wasn't imagining things. Same result.

Next, I fired off an email to customer service, detailing my problem of not being able to log-in again after successfully placing an order. I said I was also not able to reset my password because I was being told that my email/log-in info was not on file. Please help. The subject line was “Log-in Problem”

Quick as a bunny, this wizard of technology emailed back to me:
“I had the system resend your order confirmation. Did you receive it? I can see that your email is registered with us.”

Really...?

Who is this person - a 10 year old? Somebody who's first language is not English? Or someone who's severely presbyopic? Was I not clear enough with my subject line of what the problem is?
The reply I sent back was simply: “I do not have an order problem; I have a log-in problem. Please advise.” It's been 12 hours now since sending the 2nd email, and I have not heard back from Einstein.

Maybe I have a different email addy here, in The Twilight Zone.