Avoid PayPal Plus Credit Card

Just had a "delightful" experience with my PayPal Plus credit card. Despite the fact that I pay early every month, and my last payment was $1000, the collections department of my PayPal Plus credit card saw fit to call me this morning for a "past due" payment of $41.

I had just looked at my account last night to update my address from our most recent move and noticed at that time that a payment of $41 was due on 9/11/07. So why did I receive a collections call? I have absolutely no idea, and the woman calling me was so intent to bust me for my "late payment" that she never took the time to sort it out for me, either. She kept insisting that I had been receiving electronic statements for the past several months. Well, I checked my email and haven't received ANYTHING from them since May. This struck her as being, clearly, an outright lie, and she made it plain that this outrageous "over due" balance of $41 would NOT be tolerated.

I then asked her if I could just receive paper statements to avoid any confusion in future. She replied, as if I were a child, that she could do it "just this once", lecturing me on my responsibility to read my statement and make my payments on time (!).

At this point I asked to speak with a supervisor, but she said that SHE was empowered to do whatever needed done at this point and refused to comply with my request. After repeated requests to speak with a supervisor, I finally gave up and hung up, calling back on the 800 line and immediately requesting a supervisor, who was frankly little better than their so called "customer service".

Needless to say, I have closed this account.

I would strongly advise anyone who falls into customer service, particularly telephone support, to leave your ego at home. This job is not about you and your power trips; it's about retaining customers.

Companies, please do a little better to hire the people who should actually be in the field of customer service, and pay the good ones to stay. A good CSR will make you money hand over fist; a bad one will cost you.

And consumers? My advice to you is to stay away from PayPal Plus.

Real Life Animals That Look Like Muppets

klipspringer antelopes, aye-ayes, jumping spiders, Hal Sparks, and, of course, Chihuahuas..

All The Reasons I Love Alan Cumming

He is a charming combination of ego and self-dreprecating humor.
He played the best part in Cabaret.
He has an eponymous fragrance.
Prettier eyes than most girls.
He is, indeed, clever.
Great website.
One word: kilt.

Electronic Ephemera

I've been traipsing around the interwebs while Scott's asleep (has to rest up for his next 12 hour day; attorneys and hippies really should not cohabit), looking at profiles of other Bloggers who like some of the same stuff as I do.

So many funny, interesting people out there; I'm in love with most of them, just reading their brief, extemporaneous shouts to the wind. Sadly, hardly any of them blog more than a half dozen times before disappearing into the aether.

I wonder if they think about their little words, set adrift in the world with nothing to support them. I wonder if they consider that someone --- me --- came across their post and was charmed, was curious about them, was disappointed to see that their lovely little note to the world was last updated over a year ago.

I could make a career of finding all the lost blogs and posting encouraging comments. Of course, this assumes that bloggers stop blogging because they feel unread and unappreciated, and that a note from a complete stranger would have any impact on their desire to write whatsoever. Lots of people, myself included, don't post because they don't have time or they simply don't have anything clever to say. (Strangely, this exact circumstance stops some bloggers not at all.) Sometimes it's just too much work to log on, think of any topic at all, and then string a bunch of words together coherently. Right?

This is probably just me in one of my moods, the one that make me avoid the market when the senior citizens are apt to be out; the one that make me obsess on all the dogs in the world that need good homes until I have a panic attack. The one that makes me worry and fret about the happiness of complete strangers.

But, if you're out there and you stumble upon this and you think to yourself, 'I used to have a blog!', I might have read it in the middle of the night, and found you to be darling and funny and wise. I might have thoroughly enjoyed it and wished you had written more.

My Peculiar Aristrocratic Title, Which is Weirdly Appropriate

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Imperial Majesty Quinn the Lackadaisical of Grasshopper in the Hole Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title