Customer Service at it's...Finest

Happy Monday, oh yes.

Just got off the phone with my credit card company. I'll try to abbreviate this as much as possible;

7/15; I received a call from fraud dept that my card may have been compromised. We reviewed 4 charges and they were all fraudulent (cash advances, done out in CA). Ok; card # cancelled, new # issued, all fraudulent charges will be removed. Also; no need to worry about auto-payments that have been set up on this card, they will be updated/switched to the new # for you.

7/25; Received notice from auto-pay recipients that July payments failed, due to credit card not being active (so much for my cc company updating those for me). Updated payment info and payments processed.

8/2 (Saturday); rec'd statement, all fraudulent charges are still listed, along with new, cash-advance finance charges.

This morning; call cc company. Speak to someone named "Shawshum" (that's my best guess at spelling the name of this INDIAN individual). We run through my ID's, my passwords, etc, then I went through the entire history of what has transpired, from the 7/15 phone call, the reviewing of the charges, the assurance that these charges would be removed, the new statement showing all charges plus related finance charges, etc. He says I need to speak to an account manager and transfers me.

I am now speaking to "Shawma" (again, this is my best guess - my phone call is obviously still reaching all the way to INDIA). I again identify myself, going through all the security checks and passwords, ad nauseum. I then proceed to go through the entire history as well. The phone goes apparently dead. I check the counter on my phone display and it's still counting, so the call is still active. No lie; almost TEN minutes later, "Shawma" comes back on and says I need to speak to customer service. Which I found to be interesting, as I'd CALLED customer service to begin with. Anyway, I'm transferred again.

Bonnie. All right, an American! Maybe I'm getting somewhere now. I run through my ID/password process, then going through all the history again. She asks me what about the balance transfer question that I had. What? What are you talking about? Oh, it seems the only thing "Shawma" had entered into the system prior to transferring me, was that I had a balance transfer question. (WTF???) Anyway, Bonnie said I needed to speak to Account Disputes. Transferred again.

Pam. Well, another American at least, so let's see where this takes me. We go through the whole ID/password/fraud history dance once again...and she informs me that I need to speak to the fraud department. Are you kidding me? I asked Pam if this next person would indeed be the person that I needed to speak to, as she (Pam) was the 4th person that I'd already explained all of this to. She apologized and assured me that yes, this next person would be the one. Cue transfer.

Kathryn. Again; ID/password/history. (One of my passwords is a certain maker of motorcycles that I enjoy riding - she had the audacity to tell me that I'd spelled the name wrong. Which of course, I had not, but I was too worn down at this point to bother correcting her.)

Moving on; she said it’s possible that the fraudulent charges hadn’t been removed from my account because the billing period hadn’t closed yet and as such; the charges hadn’t officially been posted to my account. (Uh-huh.)

She marked the bad charges as fraud and said a form that I had to sign would be mailed out to me in 7 – 10 business days. Fantastic. The only problem is that I’m leaving on vaca for almost 3 weeks so if that form doesn’t show up before I leave, it’s not going to get signed and returned. She made notes in my account and said that if I don’t receive the form within 7 days, to call and they’ll fax the form to me - apparently a case # hasn’t been created/assigned yet, so there’s no form that can be faxed to me right now. I asked why no case # had been created yet when they were aware of this problem 3 weeks ago, but she had no answer for that.

At any rate, she gave me the phone number to call if I need to have them fax it over to me. I thanked her and hung up, glancing at the phone timer once again. 42 minutes and 43 seconds. Unreal.

Now if I could only get my hands on the d’bag(s) that somehow got my cc info and made those charges…