My attempts to live within budget are destroyed by the arrival of my credit card bill. It always contains stuff that I had conveniently forgotten about, and the myriad of minor items often add up to a surprisingly large slice of my pension.
My credit card company imagines that it is encouraging me to spend money on the card by offering points for every purchase. In reality, these points are of no interest; you would have to buy a BMW on the card before the points would be enough to buy a rice cooker, and we already have a rice cooker (quite fancy the BMW though). But they are of great interest to my wife, who loves to browse the catalogue every year or so and order stuff we don’t need. Failing that, we exchange the points for vouchers from Central which she can then spend on crucial cosmetics.
I have a rather small list of “things to do while she who must be obeyed is in Bangkok”, and exchanging my points for vouchers was one of them. So finding myself with a little free time this morning, in between the twin chores of coffee and lunch, I called the HSBC Premiere Credit Card Help Desk, the centre of the universe when it comes to exchanging your points for crap.
“Please choose a language” I was asked in Thai, and then again in English, so I did.
“Please select the service you require.” Number two was “credit card”, but of course I had to wait while the machine read out the complete list just in case number twenty three was “exchange your points for crap.” It wasn’t, so I pressed the number two.
“Please enter your credit card number and then press the hash key.”
I entered my credit card number incorrectly and pressed the hash key to start again.
“That number is incorrect. Please enter your credit card number and then press the hash key.”
I know, I know. I did it again; only this time I got it right.
“That number is incorrect. Please enter your credit card number and then press the hash key.”
Fucker. OK, I’ll do it again.
“That number is incorrect. Please enter your credit card number and then press the hash key.”
Wanky bastard. Look, this is the right number, here.
“That number is incorrect. Please contact a representative for further assistance.”
There then followed a multiple choice selection but I was sick of the game so just pressed number one.
“Hello, HSBC Premiere service, how can I help you?” “I want to redeem some credit card points” “OK, what is your credit card number?” Oh, Buddha. Anyway, I was very conversant with my credit card number at this point so I rattled it off. “And what is your name?” I told her. “And what is your phone number?” I told her. “And what is your date of birth? I told her. And what is the name of the person on your second card?” I told her. “And have you changed your address in the last six months? I told her.
I was waiting for “and what is the capital of Poland?” but it seemed I had satisfied her that I was who I said I was.
“And what can I do for you today?” “I want to redeem some credit card points.” “Oh sorry, you can’t do that over the phone.”
Comments 🔗
2011-10-20| Sid Johnstone saysBeen there, done that - most cuntin annoying, a bit like trying to get them to do something that is not written on the screen in front of them, fkn robots !!!!!!!!