The evils of corporations, part one million

[alarimer]

Or perhaps I should say, the evils of Time Warner Cable (a list that is apparently endless).

I recently switched from Time Warner to Att Uverse (another company known for evil incompetence- I am just waiting for something to go wrong there). I turned in all the equipment on the 8th of October. I am STILL getting email under that email address. It apparently has not been shut off yet. And to make matters worse, last week they took the full payment for the month of February from my bank account. I actually owed for the first 8 days of February. I had unwittingly (I think) set up a recurring payment. Clearly, if I had done that, it was a mistake not to cancel that as soon as I canceled the account. It took me 30 minutes on the phones and transferring many times to get someone to tell me I can expect a refund within six weeks. SIX WEEKS? They took the money instantly from my account but I have to wait six weeks for a refund? That is utter bullshit.

Why is every single company I deal with, whether it is cable, phone or utilities, full of utterly incompetent pieces of shit?

Fortunately I just got a robocall asking me to do a survey on their customer service or lack thereof I should say.

But there is one lesson I learned here. If you use recurring billing, be sure to stop that when you cancel a service of some kind, just to be sure they do not take the money anyway.

[rrneck]

1. Ain't it the truth.

Just think. Out there somewhere there is an army of MBA's whose life ambition is to figure out a better way to squeeze a another nickel out of you.

[Orrex]

2. RE: the six week delay

It's very possible that they only draft reimbursement checks on one of the month, so they say "six weeks" as a way of hedging their timeframe.

It's not quite bullshit, because it doesn't necessarily mean that they're being dishonest about it. They're just being assholes about it.

[alarimer]

3. That is probably true.

It just makes no sense that in the digital age where I pay bills electronically, they cannot give reimbursements electronically.

[Orrex]

4. I agree completely!

The only reason that the explanation even occurred to me is because that's how my former employer--a mutual fund company--did it. Any time we had to reimburse a fee, it meant a dozen angry calls to the shareholder or broker to explain the delay.

When the proceeds from a sale/redemption can be sent by wire on the same day, it makes no obvious sense to have to wait a month and a half for a check, but that's how they do it.

A big pain in the ass for everyone involved, but the higher-ups don't care because they're not involved!