Why Call Centres Get My Wrath

Yesterday I decided it was time to phone all of my student loan folks and up my payments along with giving them my new address. I've been here long enough to be able to balance my budget and see just how much I can give those fucking bastards them each month. It should have been an easy task...apparently with one company, nothing is easy.

• I got shuffled around like Grandma's Christmas turkey.
• I had to call back a number of times because people would put me on hold, and I would end up dumped to a dial tone
• I was sent to someone who speaks only French (despite my choosing ENGLISH)
• I was sent to someone who had no idea why I was sent there
• I was sent to someone who couldn't find me in their system
• I was sent to 95 voicemail menus, often repeatedly into the same one
• I was put on hold for up to 20 minutes at a time, only to find out they could not help me
• I was passed on to immigrant after immigrant who couldn't speak English clear enough for me to understand what the fuck they were saying and they couldn't understand me. In the words of Stewie Griffin "could I speak to somebody who didn't arrive here on a floating door?" I'm all for immigration, but dammit, why do they always have to end up at call centres where English is expected???
• I was sent to someone who wanted my Social Security Number...and when I attempted to explain to her that we do not have those in Canada, she didn't understand what I meant and kept asking for it again. I finally hung up on her.

And that was just one company...I was too pissed after wasting an hour and a half on the phone to call the rest of them. I saved that for today. Today was less painful, but there is a relatively new annoyance out there in the world of call centres...voice recognition systems...you have to speak your option and unfortunately, it didn't understand my command "get me a fucking person to speak to!"....darnit. I finally got the bypass code from the CSR I finally got to speak to and it's *7 for anyone wishing to call RBC. It gets you back to touch tone automation...like that is any better, but at least from there you can dial "0" to get a CSR (customer service rep).

Sigh...and they wonder why people get frustrated in paying back student loans. I'd like to tell them all to take a flying leap off a dam into a pit of vipers, but that won't clear my account...