Closed for Service

Free Public Service Announcement

The Invoicing Section of my credit card company is incredibly efficient. I received my credit card statement which outlined charges for the annual fee for my replacement card, right on the dot. Perfectly normal procedure! Right? Now for the Dispatch (Despatch?) Section - I’m still waiting for that replacement card!! I now need to call Customer Service.

It's my own stupid fault that I need to speak to Customer Service. I made a really idiotic mistake: I moved to another city and into a new house.

Don't ever make this mistake! It's ALWAYS better to stay in your current home, even if it's destroyed in a tsunami or an earthquake.

If other people have bought your house and are moving in, you should hide in the garage and only come out at night to forage for food.

If you move, you'll end up like me: surrounded by hundreds of cardboard boxes packed by aliens, each box containing an average of one item -- perhaps a single old sock -- wadded up inside 2000 metres of bubble wrap and corrugated cardboard.

Almost every box will be labeled with the words “sundry items” but spelled in cell-phone texting language “S. IT”. You will not be able to find ANYTHING. For example, I'm pretty sure that, before I moved, I owned a 12-year-old cat.
(I'm kidding, of course. I know exactly where the cat is. It’s inside one of those boxes which the vultures keep circling.)

On moving day, I was surrounded by a forest of stacked boxes, attempting to take apart a credenza the size of an SUV so that I could attempt to force it through a doorway the width of Kareena Kapoor, when suddenly, outside, I heard the movers, who spoke Tamil, shouting something about a paamboo. I could tell by the urgency in their voices that when translated into cell-phone text, it would be all in capital letters. So I ran outside, and there, on the verandah,was a snake.

In other places, when you move, you're given a Farewell Dinner; there in Chennai, you get the Farewell Snake!

So, anyway, after dialling the number for Customer Service listed and waiting on hold for Customer Service a cool idea came to me.

Looks as though it’s what I do these days: wait for Customer Service. My call is important to them. They have told me this many times in a sincere recorded message. They can't wait to serve me! They will answer my call just as soon as they finish serving the entire population of Uttar Pradesh. After all Chief Minister Mayawati came oh- so-close to being our fair country’s first Dalit Prime Minister!

But my point, which I am hoping to make in the telling of this tale, is that, because I moved I had to change all my essential services -- cooking gas, telephones, ration card, postal service, beer delivery, etc. -- and naturally, because all the companies involved use sophisticated network technologies, none of these services actually work right in my new abode.

Everything is all mixed up. I have e mails being printed out via my electric iron, I receive phone calls on the hand- shower, and when I turn on the washing machine, scenes from 'Desperate Housewives'' are telecast during the rinse cycle.

So to sort out this mess, I quit my job (whatever that may have been) and started spending my days waiting on hold for Customer Service, listening to the toe-tapping ''lite'' muzak they play when they are not telling you how important your call is to them. While doing this, the idea came to me.

You know those telemarketing people who always call you at siesta-time? Or those Eureka Forbes salesmen who lean on your doorbell? I'm talking about the ones who never come right out and say they're selling something. Lately, they've been using the bizarre term ''courtesy call'' to describe what they're doing.

''Sir,'' they'll say, “this is just a courtesy call to do you the courtesy of interrupting your siesta so I can ask you this question: Would you like to save 50 percent or more on your long-distance phone bill?'' or “May I demonstrate this awesome water purifier, which doesn’t need electricity and absorbs moisture from the air."

I always say no. I tell them that if I wanted to talk to someone in a distant continent I would use Skype, or better yet, just go there. And to the Eureka guy I say I only drink beer and water is bad for my alcohol stream. Then I hang up/ shut the door. But, of course, this does not stop them. The next afternoon, they call again. That's how caring and considerate they are.

So here's the scenario: On the one hand, we have the telemarketers and salesmen constantly calling on us, even though everyone hates them and, to my knowledge, nobody in the history of the world has ever bought anything from them; and on the other hand, when we want to reach Customer Service, we can never get through.

Obviously, what my Credit Card Company needs to do is round up all the employees in the Telemarketing and Field Sales Departments, troop them over to Customer Service, and order them to step over the bodies of the Customer Service employees, all of whom apparently passed away years ago, and PICK UP THE BLASTED PHONE, OK? Because I need to take a shower and my shirt is stuck in the printer.

That darn snake is flirting with my cat !!