If You Worry You’re THAT Customer, You’re Not THAT Customer

I’m using a prepaid phone and bought two cards at the mall so I could top up my account. The first card went through without a problem, and I set it aside in my wallet to scratch off the second one. At the time, I was so sleep-deprived from the holiday rush and bout of depression from two of my indoor/outdoor cats dying during the New Year celebrations that I was on autopilot.

I somehow managed to put the second card aside and slept, woke up four hours later, and tried to top the second card up. I kept getting an error message saying the service was unavailable and that I should check my account. I was sure I only topped one card up. I checked and the expiration date was still good, so I contacted customer service.

It took an hour with me waiting for the agent to reply once every three minutes and then put me on hold for so long that at one point I was on hold for fifteen minutes. I worked at a call center before, and everything about this was just so bad that if I hadn’t been so fatigued I would have been that yelling, cursing customer. In the end, I just resignedly asked if I needed to bring my receipt and the actual card with me to the store. The agent said that would be best and ended the call.

I had a free card that had a value of a fifth of the amount of the problem card, so I started rummaging in the card section of my wallet for it, went to get a coin, and lo and behold… the card I hadn’t used was in my coin purse, folded like a bill.

I had become that customer.

To the poor agent, I am so sorry. There was no chance of you resolving a problem when there was none but my stupidity.