The Wamu Screw
I generally like Washington Mutual as a company. It seems like they genuinely give a shit about your piddly checking and savings account and since I moved to New York City five years ago, I’ve been using them for both my personal and business banking. Visiting their branches has always been pleasant, the employees always act politely and even seem genuinely happy to be there doing their jobs. Six months ago, I saw what looked a pretty good rate on a online CD via the Wamu homepage, and after investigating the rate on my savings account I was shocked to find out that the APY and Interest Rate are both 0.25%! That is seriously fucked up. OK sure, I didn’t start paying attention to my finances with an adult mindset until a few months ago, but man, I really expected something over/around 3%. I invest in the online CD at something closer to 5%, mark my calendar with its maturity date, and then get all but the minimum $350.00 out of that awful savings account and into a money market fund. Hey, at least the minimum in savings affords a small degree of overdraft protection on the checking account.
Anyhow, the date of maturity for the CD came up this week. I am an extensive user of online banking and as such, I rarely have the occasion to use their automated phone system. The CD that my kash-munee was parked in was in fact an online CD, only available for enrollment online, so silly me, I thought I’d somehow be able to discontinue it online too. Nope. Fuckers. I get on the phone, and while there are many options to do all sorts of mundane things like, check your account balance! Get help en Espanol!, there isn’t an option anywhere to get help from a human. You stupid bitches, I just gave you a pretty big loan for the last six months, give me my money back! Button mashing didn’t help. #, 0, 0#, #0, *0, 0*. Nothing from the usual suspects. Invalid entry. Invalid entry. Inv-FUCK YOU! The machine hung up on me.
Then I remembered gethuman.com. What a good idea in theory. The only problem is it’s pretty trivial for these huge-ass companies to reconfigure their IVRs (Interactive Voice System) and foil the hive mind of helpful internetistas. OK gethuman, let’s see what you can do.
At first prompt press 1. Then press # at each additional prompt, ignoring messages.
OK. Calling. Welco-<1Booop>
<#Beep> Invalid Entry <#Beep> Invalid Entry <#Beep> Invalid Entry <#Beep> Invalid Entry <#Beep> Invalid Entry <#Beep> Invalid Entry <#Beep> Invalid Entry <#Beep> Invalid Entry <#Beep> Invalid Entry <#Beep> Invalid Entry
Hangup. Tenth # and I get hung up on again. Shit, maybe we really are in the future, the telephone system no longer understands touchtones. I’m almost at the end of my rope. I’m reminded briefly of the Michael Douglas movie Falling Down, wherein he goes fucking ape-shit after no longer being able to order breakfast at a fast food place because it’s past 11:30AM. But I take a deep breath and try one more time. Calmly I press 1 to get information about my personal accounts and at this point, I figure if the fucking system won’t recognize touchtones, I’ll just talk to it. I beg, I plead. Please give me a human. Agent. Help. English please. Fuck me baby, yeah, that’s it. (hoping to appeal to the IVR’s previous position as a sex chat bot maybe?)
After about 30 seconds of begging, finally, the phone rings, and shockingly quickly a human is on the other end. They cheerfully help me out and send me on my way. They are also blissfully ignorant of how to get through the IVR prompts to do what I wanted in the first place. Lesson learned? Forget about gethuman.com. Good idea, but impossible to maintain. We surely are on the verge of the robopocalypse. They have already taken over, they are just lying in wait, and when the great humano-robo war breaks out in 2010, the only method available to us for negotiations will be through one of these asshole IVRs that claims to understand English and Spanish.
“Please say ‘Peace’ to negotiate treaty”
“Peace”
“Invalid Entry.”