Dear Devalued Customer

For the first time in my life I have the monthly bill from VISA but cannot pay.

Not because I do not have the funds, but because Bank of America was either sold to or morphed into something called Comenity Bank.

In contempt of the common sense rule, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Comenity issued a new card and number a full year before the one I had would expire. That unnecessary capitalist idiocy caused a bit of confusion and embarrassment at a local restaurant and the inconvenience of being short of cash when I was dispatched to western Massachusetts first thing next morning.

As if that wasn’t enough, Comenity–an idiotic corporate name that sounds more like the drugs peddled during commercial breaks during football and baseball games: Ozempic, Skyrizy, Biktarvy, Dingdonkey, etc.–also changed the website.

For a few years, it was so easy. One of those nerds who likes to pay bills immediately just so I can forget about them, I’d click into my account as soon as the notice arrived. I’d take time to scan the itemized list and satisfy myself that there were no surprises, which there never were, and I’d pay in full.

Yesterday, Comenity’s first notice came. When my password was declared “invalid,” I called Customer Service, hereafter called CS. “The site is down,” I was told, “call tomorrow.”

This morning I did, only to be told again that either my password or username were invalid. Second call: CS said it would send a new link that would work. Ten minutes go by, no email.

Third call: CS agrees to send the statement via the US Postal Service, but offers to resend the link. I laugh at the “re” in “resend,” but the link pops up on my screen so I, always a sucker, give it another try. This time I am told not that my info is invalid, but there’s a “glitch” in the system. “Try later.”

And I’m sucker enough to try later. Should pause here to note that every one of these calls begins with a few minutes of navigation through a phone menu before my “request to speak with an agent” is recognized. At that point I’m put on hold for a few more minutes–each time.

Still a glitch in the system which prompts my fourth call. When I finally get to an agent who speaks clear, unheavily-accented English, I describe my problem. Silence. Hello? Hello? Still silence. Cut off? Hung up? Who knows?

My guess is she may have hung up when I spit out the word co-MEN-i-tee as if it were toxic waste. I had to hear the word at least a dozen times on each call and can hardly begrudge her revulsion, even if she is an employee.

Call five: Following the phone menu, my request to “speak with an agent” is met with something new when I’m informed that “the transfer of (my) call requires a $9.00 service charge.” I immediately hang up.

So now I await the statement’s appearance in the box at the foot of my driveway–while wondering if I incurred a service charge for any or all of the previous four calls, though that theft will not be known until a month from now. I dare say, $36 will still fetch a decent meal and a couple of IPAs at the Grog or Port Tavern.

Payment deadline is a full three weeks away, so I’ll give it two before I make another call. Not to Comenity, but to my congressman.

No way I’m going to risk another $9 surcharge, and by that time, I’ll have already gone through the phone menu maze of Mastercard or Discover, whichever has the first ad peddling it like a drug when I tune into the World Series Friday night.

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