Date: 8/19
Location: Place of Wage Slavery

Needing to send documents via UPS, I open up Firefox and navigate to their website. but after going through the steps to create a new shipment, I receive an error telling me that our account number isn’t valid.  This happens after repeated attempts, so I email technical support, who informs me that our account has been canceled and that I should please call Customer Service.

I have no idea why our account has been canceled.  We don’t use UPS all that often, just for the few companies we do business with who require it, and everything we send is billed to either the recipient or to a third party account, and being the person who gets the mail every day, which gives me a good chance to get out of the office for a while, I haven’t seen any correspondence from UPS that they were going to take such an action.  I asked the girl in Accounts Payable if she knew anything about it, and she states that she’s never seen an invoice from UPS in the year that she’s been working at our office

So I call Customer Service.  The automated menu system gives me a choice of options that have nothing to do with why I’m calling, so I press “0″ to get an operator.  I’m informed by the very pleasant sounding lady on the automated menu system that she’ll connect me with the appropriate operator if I select one of the following options.  She then proceeds to list the same options that she had listed previously.

So I bite.  I press the option that’s the closest to what I want to do, and then I’m given another menu of options that have absolutely nothing to do with why I called, so I press “0″ again, and for the second time, the nice automated lady tells me that she’ll connect me to the appropriate operator if I select one of the following options.  Again she lists the same options that she’d just listed, and finding those options as useless now as they were ten seconds ago, I press “0″ one more time.  Finally the nice lady tells me that she’ll transfer me to the first available operator.

After a few clicks, I hear smooth jazz in the background, and a second automated lady, whose voice isn’t nearly as pleasant, tells me that all the operators are busy and that my call is important to them and that I should hold on the line for the next available human.  I do so, and she repeats this message five seconds later, and again five seconds later, and again five seconds later, over and over again.

Finally, after several minutes of Kenny G and the increasingly irritating automated lady, I reach a real person.  I give the human our account information and tell her that I’m trying to find out why our account was canceled.  She promptly tells me that she can’t help and that I need to call Accounts Receivable, and no, she can’t connect me to them herself nor can she tell me any information about our account.  All she can do is give me their phone number.

So I call Accounts Receivable.  The automated menu system gives me a choice of options that have nothing to do with why I’m calling, so I press “0″ to get an operator.  I’m informed by the very pleasant sounding lady on the automated menu system that she’ll connect me with the appropriate operator if I select one of the following options.  She then proceeds to list the same options that she had listed previously.

I press “0″ again, and I’m finally connected with a real person, but not after spending five more minutes with Kenny G and that irritating robot woman again.  The rather unhelpful human who finally comes on the line proceeds to take my account information, and asks how she can be of assistance. I tell her why I’m calling, and she asks what our latest account activity was.  I tell her I don’t know.  She says to look at our last invoice.  I tell her we haven’t received an invoice in several months, and I don’t have one to look at.  She says she can’t help me unless I have an invoice to look at so that I can tell her our latest account activity.  I explain that I simply want to find out why our account was canceled and can’t she tell me that.  She says no, not without an invoice.  I ask with increasing frustration why she can’t simply look up our account and tell me what I want to know.  She gives me the number for Billing and tells me to call them so that I can request a copy of our latest invoice.  And no, she can’t connect me to them directly.

Sighing, I hang up and call Billing.  The automated menu system gives me a choice of options that have nothing to do with why I’m calling, so I press “0″ to get an operator.  I’m informed by the very pleasant sounding lady on the automated menu system that she’ll connect me with the appropriate operator if I select one of the following options.  She then proceeds to list the same options that she had listed previously.

I press “0″ again, and I’m finally connected with a real person, a nice man this time.  He looks on his computer and tells me that an invoice was sent out just yesterday and that we should receive it soon.  I ask if he can fax or email me a copy, and he says no, his system won’t let him do that.  He can only mail it, so I need to wait for the one that’s already been posted.  Apparently UPS has yet to hear about the 21st Century.

I ask him if he has any idea why our account was canceled, and he looks at our old invoices and notes that we haven’t had a charge all year except in May, for $2.34.  I tell him that we never received an invoice for that amount and that I hope our account wasn’t canceled for such a measly sum.  He sympathizes, and we part ways.  He goes on to help another customer, and I sit back and wait patiently for the mail to arrive.

On 8/21, an invoice from UPS arrives, dated 8/15.  It’s for $0.00.  It lists our account activity as four pieces of mail, all third party billing.  The “Total Amount Outstanding” on the invoice states that we owe UPS exactly $0.00.  The mail comes late in the day, so I wait until Monday morning, 8/24, to call Accounts Receivable again.

This time, I don’t get the automated menu system for some reason, I go straight to Kenny G and the repeating message that my call is important.  Finally, a human comes on the line, a different woman than from last Wednesday, and I give her our account information and tell her why I’m calling.  I have my invoice in front of me, just as instructed by the first lady, but this one doesn’t even bother to ask me about it nor does she request our account activity.  She instead promptly informs me that our account was turned over to a collections agency on 8/21 for a past due sum of $134.22.

I inform the woman that this past due balance is news to us.  We’ve never received an invoice for such an amount.   She says it was from 2008, and I ask her why haven’t we been contacted about it.  Surely they would have tried to collect such an amount if it was owed, yet we’ve received no past due notices or any other correspondence to indicate that we owe anything.  She is silent, literally, for about ten seconds, and then she asks if I’ve called the collection agency to discuss it with them.  I say no, how could I call them when I just found out about it fifteen seconds ago.  Again, silence.

I ask why I wasn’t told this information on 8/19, when I first called, as perhaps we could have taken care of it then before they had to send it to a collection agency.  More silence.  After further questions as to where this past due amount came from and why we weren’t notified, and getting yet more silence, she finally offers to fax me copies of the invoices in question.  I ask why the first lady couldn’t pull up those invoices and fax me copies instead of sending me to Billing.  Silence.  I ask why our invoice from 8/15 shows no outstanding balance.  Silence.

It has been five hours now, and I’m still waiting for the faxes…

What do a certain production of “Batboy: The Musical”, the controls in Animal Crossing: City Folk, and UPS have in common?

My disdain.

I paid my old high school a visit to support not only the school, but to support the young performers I’ve come to know pretty well by watching them grow as both performers and people.  Welp, I came in expecting a high school-level show, and that’s what I got: a severely unbalanced show that pitted talented youth against nausea-inducingly stilted performances by much less talented youth…  the worst part?  The talented youth weren’t able to reach their potential, and strive for growth.  The performances were strong, but the growth wasn’t there.  What a shame.  On the bright side, the show really really reall makes me want to take part in a stage production or movie again.  It’s a shame I won’t have the time for a long time to come…

Thanksgiving is coming up–  That means no school, no work, and mucho family!

I spent time with my little brother today checking out his new game, Animal Crossing: City Folk.  I created a character aptly named “Hector” and moved into his town named “Nashvile”.  Fail.

I lost my life to the first US iteration of the Sims-esque, very Nintendo series a few years back (What, 6 years back? Jeez, that’s a looooong time…), and I was a bit excited to see the upgrades in this version.  Too bad the controls blow.  Hard.

I got myself into debt and paid off the first chunk of money after hitting up the fishing.  Damn Nintendo made the fishing more fair now by cutting your chances of catching worthwhile fish.  Now after filling up your “pockets” with fish, you’ll be looking at about a 5,000-bell profit, when in the Gamecube installment, you could easily look at 20,000…  Damn, now I have to work harder to compete with my lil’ bro and his 8-hour daily play time vs. my 1-hour a week playtime…

Fishing Mii/Animal Crossing/No mouth style!

As for my UPS hate… I ordered a package I’ve been desperately waiting for since Nov. 12th…  I paid 15$ dollars to get it in a few days…  I STILL haven’t gotten the fucking package yet.  Ups, you’re breaking my balls.  Breaking. My. Balls.

What was in the package, you ask?  Magic crap.  Card sleeves, a box for storing the surplus of cards I have overflowing around my PS3, a few more deckboxes for my new decks, and some more dice to add to my (very) small collection…

There I am, waiting for my fresh 360 to arrive sometime “after 5pm,” when I get called away from my apartment for, literally, 45 minutes, from 6:15 to 7. And what do I come back to? Another slip saying they tried to deliver it, but needed my signature. Missed it by that much.

According to the “UPSInfoNotice,” they will try one last time tomorrow anytime after 2pm. If I’m not there, which I most likely won’t be, I’ll have to drive all the way out to the UPS delivery center that’s way out by the airport, and manned by workers that are so unfriendly, UPS won’t even let them drive trucks. I don’t want to go there.

Ok, so I’m falling prey to the eBay bug. I’ve simply got too much junk in my house and some of it has to go. I started out with my AD&D stuff since I don’t play any more, and don’t foresee playing in the future at all.

After about 6 trips to the post office for postage and mailing, I finally get tired of it and bought myself a Dymo Labelwriter so that I could do the whole “Internet postage” thing and mail directly from my house. Unfortunately, finding Internet postage labels for it around here is a little difficult, so on Sunday, I ordered a roll of 2 5/16″ x 7″ labels 2nd day delivery, straight from Dymo.com…

Knowing that UPS sucks, I put the obligatory “UPS, Please ring doorbell” sign on my front door.

(this is where it gets interesting…)

This morning, while taking out the trash, I trip, stumble, and almost break my leg over a “lump” sitting in the middle of my front porch. Recovering, I notice that the package from Dymo was sitting there, completely a pile of mush having been subjected to rain and morning dew. …. And the illiterate, overpaid fucker from UPS had not rung the goddamned bell despite a huge 8.5 x 11 sign in 96 point font in plain view taped on the door…

I sincerely wish people would stop using UPS, and that vendors would stop forcing UPS on us normal folks. They suck. Plain and simple, and will NEVER get my sympathy vote the next time those assholes go out on strike because “they’re underpaid”.

By means of comparison, the lady who delivers my mail from USPS (Betty) knows me by name and has NEVER, NOT ONCE failed to stop, ring the doorbell, and wait for me to acknowledge the delivery of ANY package, whether or not a signature has been required.