difficult, difficult, difficult, then suddenly very easy

I just closed out one of my credit cards. It is the first one I got after college. It had a high interest rate and didn’t really offer much of anything except it racked up AmericaWest frequent flyer miles. I braced myself for an annoying but polite discussion with the customer representative and dialled their services number. After entering my account number and the last four digits of my social security number, I waited to hear the menu options and selected to speak to a representative. Then the service went to the busy tone and disconnected! Arg.

So I called again and repeated the process. This time, it went to a pleasant little waiting music which lulled me into a false sense of security, then suddenly, busy tone and disconnection! Oh noes!

I looked up a different service number and called, but it must have channelled the call to the same place, because it was the same process over again.

I tried one more time, because I’m stubborn like that, and bam! I got a friendly voice. She immediately connected me with an account manager who was exceedingly polite and asked me a couple of simple questions to verify my identity and that was it. No questions as to why I am closing out the account, no tempting offers to try to keep me, nothing. Sweet! Thanks customer representatives*!

*Who are they representing me to? The corporation? Are they watching out for me? Is that what they are paid for? Yeah right. I’ve also heard some places call people “customer advocates”. Weird. Anyway, these people were fantastic and I don’t hold them responsible for what was obviously a phone system error, as frustrating as it was. Good on you, Bank of America, for having a decent process for closing a card without hassle.