My current MPP: I've 'stached enough that Large Financial signed my blue-jeans self up for their White Glove service, and it's bugging me.
Story time. I set out to accomplish a Routine Transaction. It's not so routine for me, but for Large Financial, it's just Tuesday.
WTF 1: their Routine Transaction web form is broken. It won't accept an address in the address field without a nonexistent apartment number. It rejects the hyphens in a reference number I'm trying to include. I've seen better web forms from volunteers in small nonprofits. Then again, we have some pretty sharp volunteers in these parts.
WTF 2: at this point, it's after regular business hours on the east coast. I'm on the west coast, and customer service is open a little longer, so I call. I'm phone shy, and will generally exhaust other options before phoning (struggle with the website some more, bike to the branch across town...). Routine Transaction needs to happen soon, so I call. I convince the phone tree that I actually need a human. This human listens, or pretends to, while I explain WTF 1, which I somehow need to repeat more than once. Then she goes to "look into it," and puts me on hold. Twelve minutes of soft jazz later, I run off the end of their extended business hours, or at least I think that's why their phone system hangs up on me.
WTF 3: Next morning, I try the text chat version of customer service, which is now open. I get put into a queue, put through to a person (or at least the automated "give me a moment to read your question" message with a name attached), put back in the queue, and then dumped out entirely, with the question I filled in, erased. Where the hell is the ubiquitous stupid customer service survey when you need it?
There's an option I've been avoiding up to now, which is the White Glove guy they've been pestering me to call. It was after his hours the night before. I'm pretty sure he's supposed to do advisor stuff, which is not what I want and a far cry from Routine Transaction. I'm still phone shy, per above. But I figure maybe he at least has a direct line to the Routine Transaction department, and it's abundantly clear that Customer Service isn't about to provide any. So I call.
Complete 180. White Glove guy takes care of Routine Transactions routinely, of course, and can do mine right now, on the phone, complete with the impossible hyphens in the reference number. Hey, presto, done, and while we're here, he can even waive the fee. (Aside: "convenience fee" is an oxymoron.)
I try to impress upon him how comically badly it had gone, naively attempting Routine Transaction via the public entrance, but I don't think White Glove guy is interested, which is too bad, because I was that customer first, for a long time.
What has gotten his attention, even before now, is the substantial portion of my 'stache that's at Large Financial, which he'd like to help optimize. It could do with some optimization, but it's accumulated without his help so far. This is not why I called, and I'm at my limit of pretending I'm okay with this phone thing. I will get there, when I get there, and then do things my way.
So I do something I've done with other salescritters occasionally, which is to say something that's completely outside of their script.
"I'm not really looking to optimize this right now. I don't need this money to do more, because my and DH's burn rate together in [HCOLA] is around $30,000 per year." (We're FI but OMY and our holdings at Large Financial, which he was looking at when I said this, would only have underscored the point.)
The White Glove guy's head exploded. How on Earth could we possibly do that?! Where do you live?
I didn't use the word "mustache," but I gave him the very short synopsis. Paid off house, two bicycles, one lonely econobox car, lunch boxes, and using those sweaters our grannies made us.
Optimize that, I dare you. Also, please, for the love of Pete, get somebody to fix that damned form.
Topic: Mustachian People Problems (just for fun) (Read 5157682 times)
