Surreal customer service

Once upon a time there was a nice lady named Nancy, who always tried to be a responsible adult. After her mother died, Nancy dutifully changed the mailing address to her own house. She even went in person to the local post office to do this. A week later, mail was still coming to the old house, but Nancy thought to give it more time. Two weeks later, mail was still going to the old address. This included checks and bank statements.

Nancy makes another trip to the Post Office and nicely asks to speak with the supervisor. Thirty minutes later, a smiling supervisor person comes to the front and asks how she can help. (Well, first of all, why did you keep me waiting 30 minutes? But, we’ll let that go.) I nicely explain the situation and my concerns to her. She nods sympathetically and sighs as she says, “Oh dear, it’s those temporary mail people that are messing things up. I will make sure this gets taken care of; I will put a BIG sign next to that postal route, saying this mail should be forwarded.”

Another week goes by, guess what???? Yep, you guessed it, mail is STILL being delivered to the old address. After taking a few deep breaths, I go back to the Post Office and speak with yet another supervisor. She also nods sympathetically and says this shouldn’t happen. Well, yes that is true, it shouldn’t happen, but it is. How do we resolve this?

But, wait, it doesn’t end there. One piece of mail that was delivered to the old address was some important information from the bank. The bank shall remain nameless, but let’s just say that it has the words, “Bank” and “America” in its name.

So I go to the local bank branch and meet with a smiling, soft-spoken young lady. Aside from the fact that she looks like she is 12 years old, she seems nice enough. I explain the situation to her, that mail with personal information is being sent to an old address that I changed THREE, yes, THREE, months ago. Can she explain why that is happening? She looks very puzzled and concerned and starts tapping quickly at her keyboard. She finally looks up and smiles and says, “All is well, the address in our system is showing the correct new address.”

I look at her and say, “Well, somewhere in your system you have the old address because this was just delivered to the old address yesterday.” She starts to look puzzled again and starts tapping away at the keyboard. She also looks at the mail that was delivered and says, “Oh, but this is coming from a separate division of the bank.” I am thinking, “Okay, but it’s still the same bank, isn’t it?”

She continues to look puzzled, does some more tapping of her keyboard and then looks up and says, “Well, in order to change the profile address, we will need formal identification from the original account owner.” By now, I realize that I have entered the twilight zone. I look at her, smile nicely and say, “Well, that will be a little difficult to do since the original account owner is no longer in this world.” She agrees. But, she says there is nothing she can do.

By now I am losing my patience so I say, “I am not upset at you, but let’s take a look at this situation. I am trying to do the right thing here. Who knows what will happen to the mail going to the old address? It may fall into the wrong hands. There could be identity theft and draining of bank accounts. That will not be my problem now, will it? The bank will be responsible for making the account whole, won’t it?”

So now, she nods and says, “Well, I can try writing a note to our back office to change the profile address.”

That wasn’t so hard, now was it?

Argghhhhh. . . .

So, what stories of customer service fun do you have?