Tuesday is the New Monday

Yesterday's episode was going to be about the move into the new apartment, but due to extenuating circumstances (i.e., me forgetting to write the post until today) it's coming to you a day late. However, as unluck would have it I have an even better coincidence to tell you all about today. But first, the move!

At the end of our last episode, we had (finally) been approved for the new apartment. The resulting frantic rush to move the remaining boxes and assorted items to the new apartment that hadn't already been put in storage was a sight to behold. Our friends came through for us where we couldn't have otherwise, having no car (and no license), helping us to throw our remaining belongings into boxes, and lifting all manner of heavy objects until well past midnight, when we were all sweaty and tired monsters. If we were lucky in one thing in life, readers, it would be our friends.

The process of settling into our new apartment has been an arduous one. Our belongings are slowly trickling back out of storage, but we are uncomfortably deprived of our furniture until able to rent a truck or find a friend with a truck. And let me tell you, we have a lot of furniture. Otherwise, our Internet service has been installed, and we now once again have a link with the outside world. To which I say, hooray!

In any case, that has been our past week in brief. However, today something very interesting happened to me, but first some back story.

Six months ago, I purchased a hosting package, including a domain name, from a company known as Dot5 Hosting. The package seemed pretty good; a shared hosting package with loads of bandwidth that was not too expensive. However, one day after I purchased the hosting package, my site crashed. For the next 36 hours. For those of you who are not web savvy, having your site go down for 36 hours is the equivalent of a nightmare where you are plummeting to the earth at the core of a meteor made entirely out of hungry tigers, after being dunked in barbecue sauce.

Naturally, I immediately called their customer service number and was met with a busy signal. This continued for the next four hours. So I sent an e-mail through their website asking quite nicely if they would please cancel my service, because I would be going with another hosting service (HostGator, which turned out to be quite lovely and more than deserving of that shameless plug). A support employee named simply "Gary" (it's like Cher) replied:

"I am sorry to hear that you would like to leave Dot5Hosting. Is there anything in which I could do personally for you to keep you with Dot5? I would be more than happy to go over any outstanding issues you have personally.

-Gary
Priority: High
Status: Closed"

Status closed? I e-mailed "Gary" back and told him no, thank you, I'd just like to cancel my service.

A month and some change went by and after looking at my online statements from my bank, PNC Bank of Delaware (I haven't received a paper statement in more than a year; more on that momentarily), I discovered that Dot5 Hosting was still charging me, and the blank page I left behind on my hosting was still there.

Okay. Simple enough. I'll just call my bank and dispute the charge, I told myself. So I did just that, and my bank is as helpful as can be. They started processing the charge dispute and told me they'd mail me a form I had to fill out and mail back. Great; I reminded them that I haven't been getting my paper statements for the past six months, and they verified my mailing address and promised they'd get those statements sent to the correct address. Also, they canceled my debit card and said they would mail me a new one.

A week went by, and I received my new debit card but not the dispute form they needed me to fill out. I called, and they said it might take a few more days. So I waited another week and called again. No news, but they promised they would call me back. Another two weeks went by and there was no word. Then something strange happened.

Another charge appeared on my account, claiming it was a magazine subscription purchase from a Best Buy in New York. Stranger yet, it was charged to my old card. If the card had been canceled, how did it get charged? I haven't been to New York in years, and I sure wouldn't be going there to buy a magazine subscription. So I called them again and they had my $29.95 refunded to me within the week. Odd...it had already taken them a month to handle a $23.85 refund which they hadn't yet, but a $29.95 refund took them a few days, as did the refunds of the overdraft fees that resulted from all of this big mess. Hurray.

Yet another two months went by, and I had pretty much given up on getting back my $23.85 and that resulting overdraft fee. My tax return had put me back above a negative balance and I was happy enough. However, I looked at my online statement a couple weeks ago and what did I see? Another $29.95 charge from Best Buy. Okay, I decided. I was getting to the bottom of this. And I was going to get all of my money back, not just some of it.

Today, I called PNC Bank customer service, and explained the situation. The first woman I spoke with told me that I would have to go into a branch to change my address before I disputed the latest charge from Best Buy, because "I had no recent activity on my account to prove who I was." Huh? She also told me that I'd have to call their dispute department and speak to them about my problem with Dot5 Hosting. I thought to myself, "it begins!"

So I called the dispute department, gave my information, explained my situation and was put on hold for the agent who was handling my dispute. I was put on hold for 20 minutes. In complete silence. No hold music, no anything. So I started talking into the phone, just talking, "hello, is anyone there, I'd really like some hold music please, you can even go back to playing the banjo music that your customer service department had on before." The lady I was speaking to before picked the phone back up, confused. She hadn't transferred me to the agent; she had accidentally put me on a strange sort of hold and put the phone down. D'oh! So she transferred me and the agent picked up right away.

Deborah, the dispute agent, was the kind of woman who is more used to doing her work than to talking to customers (a trait that I appreciate in anyone), and she explained to me the situation from their end, which was this: they had mailed me the form I needed to fill out and send back, and I hadn't sent it back, and it was now too late for them to dispute the charge. D'oh! I told them I had never received any form, and that I also hadn't received my statements for the past year. She recommended that I call customer service and try to speak to a supervisor about waiving the charge, seeing that it was not a substantial one. "Yes," I said, "I'll do that."

So I called customer service again, and got a nice lady with a bit of a drawl to her voice, who first told me that she could use my debit card number to verify my identity and change my address, then process my latest dispute. Then she explained to me that she couldn't do much of anything about what I wanted done, and that I'd have to pay $5 for each month's statement that I wanted mailed to me. Wow, what a rip-off. I suppose it became clear enough that I was frazzled (after about two hours on the phone, who wouldn't be?) and she cut herself off mid-statement and said "tell you what, let me see if I can escalate this." To which I responded, perhaps a little forcefully, "please do!"

The escalated version of the nice lady with a drawl was a supervisor with a particularly soothing voice named Dara. I commented on her name; Morgan and I have a friend named Dara, so I found it pretty amusing. I told her the situation up to that point, dropped Deborah's name, and told her I was very displeased with how I was being handed around like a hot potato. So Dara asked me to hold, and put me on hold for a very long time. When she returned, she agreed to send me my last year's worth of bank statements, and to refund me all of the charges I had disputed, and if any charges had been missed that I should call her right away and get her to handle it.

So, today's sad story has a happy ending. And all I lost is hours of my time!