Thursday, July 30, 2009

What a Mess

Yesterday afternoon Teen's phone started to ring like crazy with all different numbers that he didn't know. He would answer the phone and people would either say they had the wrong number or ask for someone he didn't know.

This proceeded until about 6pm. Then first thing this morning it started again. Teen started to ask who they were looking for and would get varying responses. Somewhere in all of the calls he got the idea that Verizon was responsible somehow. Someone told him that it was programmed into his phone at their store.

After receiving so many calls this morning, he called me at work to see what I could do. I had him send me the numbers so that I could call AT&T and see what they could do. I cannot say enough about the 2 people I talked to today. Usually I can't get any type of help. Today was the exception to the rule. After explaining the situation to the first girl I talked to she transferred me to a customer service specialist (whatever that is).

I again explained what was going on. She gave me a couple of suggestions of how to handle the situation. Including changing his number for free if we couldn't get the problem corrected. Upon looking over my account she also noticed that we were over our minutes for the month. At this point she removed the overcharge for this month and the one for last month and added 1000 rollover minutes to the account.

Wow - I never would have asked for anything close to that, but I am not complaining. We decided perhaps the best thing to do was to wait just a day to see if it stopped and if not to go into the store and have the number changed.

After I got off of the phone I went online to my account and noticed that even though Teen was getting different numbers each call on his called ID all of the numbers were from the same number online.

Now the detective in me took over. First I went to AnyWho.com and did a reverse search on the number. Nothing. Then I just plain old Googled the number. BINGO! The number was for our credit union. Hmmmm......

So I called the number and it went right to my son's phone. Huh? I must have hit redial or something. Tried it again and yep, right to my son's phone.

Now things are starting to add up. Why the calls stopped at a certain time and then started again. But the problem was that I didn't have another number for the Credit Union to see what was going on. I faxed them and emailed them and waited for about 5 minutes. I then tried the number again and waited for a few minutes. After about 20 minutes I got through and they answered. As soon as I said who I was they transferred me to the Manager.

Here is what happened:

About 2 weeks ago I wrote a check to a former co-worker for some items I had purchased from LTD. Yesterday afternoon her boyfriend attempted to cash it at the credit union where I bank.

Being that his name was not on the check and he didn't have an account there, they were unable to cash the check. He started getting pretty upset so the teller looked up my number and tried to call me to see if I knew him. I guess in all of the stress she was under she called Teens phone by mistake. Teen did not answer.

Somehow, when she called Teens phone trying to get a hold of me she hit the transfer button. That is where all of the calls where coming from. To top it off, they were getting more than their usual amount of calls as one of their major customers Direct Deposit did not go through last night and there were a lot of angry customers whose checks never hit the bank.

What a mess! Thankfully it is all resolved now and Teen can go back to texting the world.

How was your day?

Stacy

6 comments:

Jen said...

Oh my! Great detective work, Stacy!
That would have made me crazy trying to figure out!

And what a pleasant surprise to speak with not one, but two, helpful people at the end of the customer service line!

Becca said...

Wow, glad that you got to the bottom of that mess. And you thought that your days were boring!

ShanaM said...

Wow. What a mess! Glad to hear that things aren't boring, anyway!!
And a customer service person who is helpful is great!!

Tracie said...

WTH! I hope you got more from them than just an "i'm sorry for the inconvenicne"! That's crazy! Glad you found some helpful customer service people - that doesn't happen much these days

Turfdad said...

That was a mess. I would not have handled it well. Probably would have dove straight for the new number instead of trying to figure out the problem.

What's with the teens and texting? I think it's easier to talk.
That's why I have a PHONE. I feel a new blog post coming on.

Dory said...

Holy moly!! You did great figuring it out - good job detective!!