“The fool neither forgives nor forgets. The naive either forgives and forgets. The clever forgives, but he does not forget.”
Hungarian-American psychiatrist Thomas Szasz (1920-2012)
Jóvá teszem!
Translated from Magyar, it means “I will make it right!”
After an exceptionally unpleasant evening last night with another group in customer service trying to be the first one to finally do me in well before cancer or Alzheimer’s and a couple of hours of writing therapy, the morning comes and there’s that compulsion to try to find a happier ending in what is to this point a harrowing story of customer service.
It’s a Hungarian tradition to try to cleanse the way when things have gone ill as a way of trying to restore some measure of balance to the universe. Or at least try to do the best we can at it…
Please don’t let the example of Viktor Orbán colour your perception of us for whilst he may rule Hungary as a de facto dictator, he’s completely lost the plot of the ruling passion that served our culture well through the centuries. His ideas of shunning ones from other lands goes against every notion of hospitality and honour and the kept word we hold dear.
He will not atone and acknowledge the evil he has done to those refugees who merely wished to traverse the land on their way to their final destination by setting the Rendőrség (Hungarian State Police) upon them or shutting the borders in the face of those who were desperately fleeing for their lives.
It falls to us who know of and believe in the old ways of honour to do for the world what he cannot be bothered to do by himself.
Jóvá teszem!
That was at least the intention when I rang up the Capital One Fraud Department that had so badly fallen at the fence the night before to try once more to have an adult conversation with them and perhaps get us to that happier place.
And let’s just say that mission didn’t get off to a particularly successful or pleasant start with level one in an off-shore call centre.
In fairness, the gent I got on the phone wasn’t anywhere near as rude as supervisor Jason but he also was very effective in stonewalling me from talking to the actual people I needed to try to address the situation and lingering feelings of insult and disrespect.
I realise they have their processes which they feel are sacrosanct suicide pacts but there’s no way you can ever convince me or indeed anyone capable of reason that a level one agent can address issues with the behaviour of his superiors and that it’s a waste of time to even bother with it.
There are times when someone is asking for the supervisor straightaway that they’re doing it for a reason and not just to be a pain in the ass.
I will give this guy credit, he did actually come up with a suggestion that was useful to break the impasse…ring up the main customer service number.
OK, I will say that VRU is very draconian…it forces you to talk to it (which I hate because most don’t have a clue how to handle proper Queen’s English) and even when you try to bypass the chatbot interface with hitting zero or telling it “human” or “agent”, this particular VRU is very nasty and will just disconnect you straightaway.
The third time was a charm and the person in the foreign call centre was at least pleasant enough to not give me any grief and got me to supervisor Linda in fairly short order.
And that’s what made all of the pain and the grief of trying to making an effort to fight my way through the bureaucracy even after being gravely insulted and abused because I finally found the one person who truly gets being a parent wanting to defend their son’s rights under FCRA and seems to genuinely care about the customer’s feelings even though she’s got no control over the department that truly stuck their foot in it.
By the time I was done giving her the Reader’s Digest (kids today will never remember the joy those tiny magazines could bring!) version of the events, she was absolutely horrified and apologised profusely which does go a lot further with me than most might think when they read the rage therapy posts.
But what really sold the encounter was that she actually actively listened to what I was telling her and why Nicholas and I were extremely uncomfortable giving out very personal information to total strangers halfway round the world who showed through word and deed that they felt they were completely unaccountable for mending their company’s actions.
I can only hope that feedback finds the ears and minds of the people at Capital One who might be moved to actually address those customer service issues.
She then asked the very important question that I honestly didn’t have the answer to…was the card in question shut down? And then she tried her level best to at least confirm that it had been and the “investigation” promised by Jason wasn’t just chucked in the bin out of spite and pique.
Even though she wasn’t able to without Nicholas here, her effort to at least try and reassure me on that front is enough for me to give the benefit of the doubt that the card is shut down and that we should see the investigation report in the post when it concludes.
Had it been left to the ones I’d spoken to previously…no way in hell I’d trust them as far as I can throw them.
I’ll confess that I’m unlikely to ever carry a Capital One credit card in my wallet ever in my life.
At least it will be because I don’t actually need or want it rather than rejecting it out of hand based on past poor experiences with customer service at it’s predecessor institution Signet Bank and the events of the last 24 hours.
It seemed only fair to try to give them as much a chance to cleanse the way as I felt I needed to do.
I’ll say it was refreshing to find someone who was willing to play along and make that happen.
Jóvá teszem!