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March 01, 2005
Listening To Your Life Get Shorter To The Sounds of Lionel Richie
"If you would like to wait for forty minutes listening to Lionel Richie songs, please press 3."
"If you would like to wait for fifty-six minutes listening to cats claw-fucking on a piano, please press 4."
"If you would like us to give you cancer psychically, please press 5."
"Ooo! Psychic cancer!" BOOP
""If you would like prompt service from an actual human being without having to listen to a digital recording for the better part of an hour, please crawl up our fat incompetent ass. There’s a time machine there you can use to go back to 1950."
After four months of sunny fun in California I got a call last week from my Canadian bank, TD Canada Trust. 120 days of no account activity had initiated a friendly check-up, evidently, to ensure I wasn’t in fact dead.
Luckily for me, this wasn’t the case. However, since I’d had to open an American checking account in order to get paid in LA, for all intents and purposes I might as well have been, according to TD Canada Trust. A call center woman told me that my account was about to be shut down due to a lack of account activity. Additionally, though I’d left my account with about $5 in it, TD had continued to take monthly service fees from me, so I was now about 70 bucks in the hole. (They seemed unconcerned about the rather obvious detail that I haven’t lived within 2500 miles of a TD location in almost half a year, making their case for servicing me in any way slightly dubious.)
My TD Canada Trust account is a pretty simple checking account, so I was prepared to happily ignore their threats to give it a quick death. "Oooo, don’t shut down my account! I need that -$70!" I thought, rolling my eyes at their repeated calls and, in my hubris, maybe even making a few “quack quack” duck gestures with my hand while on the phone with them.
It wasn’t until late last week that I realized this silly little checking account was also tied into my TD Visa card. Whoops. My credit rating is, to be charitable, something of a financially themed holocaust. I’m the guy that, when requesting a credit card, tends to get peals of disbelieving laughter followed by a dial tone.
The only way I’d managed to con Visa into giving me a credit card in the first place was because it’d come as part of a student loan account I’d opened with my parents during college. I’d held onto the damn thing ever since, knowing that with my appalling credit rating, a TD Student Visa would be the closest I’d get to having plastic until well into my thirties. The checking account they could toss into Lake Ontario for all I cared, but that TD Student Visa was my sole lifeline to Canadian credit. I called them back promptly, this time with an air of apologetic supplication. Of course I’d love to get them that $70 outstanding. What are pals for?
They suggested transferring the funds through Western Union — which I decided to do online, using my American Visa (a piece of plastic that, in direct contrast to Canada, was so alarmingly easy to get there are probably dogs in the states charging their kibble).
No dice. While Western Union was willing and able, TD Canada Trust wasn’t set up for an online money transfer. Chagrined, I tried doing it by phone.
No dice. TD Canada Trust wasn’t set up for a telephone money transfer either. Running out of options, I managed to track down a Western Union location at a nearby drugstore and — after a delightful five days spent prying information from an uncomprehending Portuguese cashier as to when the Western Union rep might conceivably be in the drugstore — I managed to send the payment. Finally.
No dice. I received a call from Western Union this morning explaining that TD Canada Trust had been unable to figure out what to do with the money, and had sent it back. This despite four calls with their customer service department writing down complex 15-digit city codes and reference numbers.
So now I’m once again waiting on hold with TD Canada Trust — an action that I’ve grown progressively more familiar with over the past two weeks — in an effort to speak to a real live person and, against all laws of reason in the world, convince a hydrocephalic moron in a call center to allow me to please, pretty please, give them money.
I hate you, Canada. I hates you SO MUCH. Why you gotsta let me down, Canada? Why you gotsta make Ike hit you?
Posted by Jay Pinkerton at 11:07 AM | Comments (9)