Yeah, I'm on pager duty again and it officially sucks it. Needless to say, I won't have a lot of time to write about the stuff percolating in my brain until this weekend sometime.
In other news, my credit card number got stolen and someone used it to buy a bunch of country CDs from a French music website. Capital One was on that like flies on shit, and called me the next day. Apparently my buying habits don't normally include purchases of country music from France, so all sorts of red flags went up. I could probably cause some real trouble if I ordered some rap music from Israel or something.
They blasted through their brownie points pretty quickly though when I called them back on the fraud line and got hung up on by some dude name "Steve Smith" who was clearly in Bangalore somewhere. After I punched in all sorts of information to the automated system, he came on the line. His job was to rattle off some charge amounts and stores and I was supposed to verify or deny using my card at those establishments. Apparently, he got pissed when I couldn't understand him and had to ask him to repeat himself a few times.
I was very nice about it too -- it's not like I was a dick or anything. Hell, he obviously spoke English way better than I spoke his native language, so I'm not sure why he got so angry so fast. Maybe he was upset about the 10,000 rupees he pissed away on that "How to speak with a American accent" 4 DVD set.
I even apologized for my lack of ability to understand whateverthefuck language he was half speaking. I said, "I'm sorry -- but I'm having trouble understanding you. Could you please repeat that company name again?" He replied with something very angry sounding and completely unintelligible, and then hung up on me.
I am pretty sure it was Hindi for "I'm going to use your card to purchase $1600 dollars worth of Ravi Shankar CDs, you American asshole" but I could be wrong.
After that, I started thinking, "Did I just get phished by an elaborate automated voice-recognition system?" I had punched in my account number, the last 4 digits of my social security number and my card code, and if the number was fake, I had just given up all that information willingly.
So I called the number on the back of my card to verify that the fraud number was real.
The nice lady confirmed for me that it was indeed just a pissed off Indian dude who worked the phones for Capital One.
So I guess that's better, but I still want to call him back and tell him he's an asshole.
AAAHHH I hate that shit.
ReplyDeleteLast week we got a new fax machine and I couldn't figure out how to turn down the damn volume on the thing.
I called HP's help line and got my own "Mrs. Smith" She had me repeat everything I said at least 3 times. No joke, no exageration, I couldn't understand her and she had NO idea what I was saying. I tried my best to speak slowly and clearly but she just didn't UNDERFREAKINGstand me.
Needless to say our fax machine is one loud mo-facker.
I can't help you saying FU in Hindi but there is another curse "Madachod" .
ReplyDeleteIf you figure out how to say it, could you let us know?
ReplyDeleteBecause I'd love to learn that. Having already added the Italian words to my list.
That'd be just great!
Je suis désolé, mais les ruisseaux de Garth m'incite à faire des choses folles.
ReplyDeleteThis was interesting, seeing as I'd just read the article on the front of zug.com. Apparently, they want his credit card to get stolen. or something.
ReplyDeleteWe just changed our email web access at work, I got two calls from elderly southerns who had apparently just learned the word 'phishing' and were proud to use it in a conversation.
ReplyDeleteThey were sure that they had uncovered some scam, despite company wide emails explaining the changes.
Those phishers are crafty, let me tell you.
I have to say though, after talking to a call center employee whose name was "Stephen" pronounced like "Stiiipen" I know what you mean. They can get pretty testy when the communications break down.
Steve Smith? Geez, can't they be a little more original with their names?
ReplyDeleteShamus, you have to love babelfish:
ReplyDelete"I am sorry, but the brooks of Garth encourages to me to make insane things."
I'm currently working on learning "Fuck you" and "worthless piece of shit" in 8 languages. Nope, guess I should make that 9 as soon as I add Hindi to the list.
ReplyDeleteAnd Capital One does a great job of keeping you from going under when identity theft happens. I won't carry another credit card.
"Help desk" is becoming an oxymoron...
On the plus side, I am enjoying my new cd's. so thanks!
ReplyDeleteYou are so not jellin.
ReplyDelete