The nightmare after Christmas gift

Window on the West
Opinion column

by Mary Rupert

I was patting myself on the back on Christmas Day because I had figured out a way to get a present to an out-of-town relative fast.

I wasn’t quite sure whether this relative would come into town for Christmas, but as it turns out, a few days before Christmas, I learned she couldn’t be here.

She sent us a gift overnight through the mail, paying more than $20 in postage. I decided to send her a gift card through the website of a major department store. I sent her an email telling her to watch her email for the gift card. I reasoned that I wouldn’t pay that $20 in postage and my gift would still get there in time.

But I was wrong.

A few days after Christmas, she called and said she hadn’t seen the gift card. I went back into my email and discovered a message that said, “Thanks for your e-gift card order.” That’s the message I saw on Christmas Day after I had sent the gift card.

What I didn’t see, because I was very busy that day, was the other message that arrived on my email about an hour-and-a-half after that first one. It said, “Sorry. We couldn’t complete your order.” It explained that my gift card had not been sent and could not be completed. It had a phone number I could call.

So I called the number, some days after Christmas, after my relative’s call, and thought I would just re-send it. Easier said than done, however. First of all, I didn’t know what number to choose on the customer service directory, as the email did not say which department to request, so I chose the wrong one. It asked for some information that I tried to enter, but apparently it was the wrong information for the wrong department. I hit an “O” and someone then told me that a different department handles it, please hold.

The next person said he would look into it and see what’s going on. He thought maybe it had to do with a capital letter “L” I used in one of the email addresses. These people obviously had my information in front of them, and I was asked to verify it. He wasn’t sure why the email address was being rejected. He said I could try a physical gift card from their store and mail it to the recipient. He said he would transfer me to a specialist to assist with this.

So then I was connected to a man with an accent who said he was with the fraud department. I was asked to give out my name, address, email address and the last four digits of my credit card. He asked if I was sending the gift to a family member. He said my information was matching their system so he would release it, and replace the order for me. He put me on hold and music played in the background.

Next, a woman picked up the phone and said she understood that the order would be released, if that’s OK. Then she said something that sounded to me like she thought the order was a “pre-lit tree.” No, I said it was a gift card. She wanted my email address, too, and wanted to verify my name and address again. She had a reorder number for it. She’ll get to it in a few minutes, she just wanted to make some notes, she said. She said she was putting the gift card in the cart, and it was telling her that the item is no longer in stock. She put me on hold for a while.

Then a man picked up and said “Hello, may I help you?” I explained that I was on the phone with a woman who was handling my call, and she was going to put through the order for me again. Then he explained that when they put me on hold, they are really transferring me. He asked for my home phone number, email and address – again. He said he would need to check if the order went through and was finished. I explained to him that one or two people had already done the same thing and may still be working on it. I started to wonder, what if two or three of them put through the same order for a gift card all at once, and I am billed three times for it? I didn’t want that to happen.

I opened my email and checked it to see if I had another message saying that the order had been sent through again, but I didn’t have any messages at all. Then I started wondering if I was being scammed in this call to a phone number that I received on the email message about my order not going through, and I decided to end the call. No order.

After I got off the phone, I went online to the department store’s website, and clicked on “customer service.” After reading some of the information, I found their phone number hidden away in another inside page, and yes, I had been calling the right number for customer service.

But there I was, some days after Christmas, embarrassed because my gift did not arrive by Christmas and especially embarrassed because I told a relative there was a present coming and it didn’t arrive. And I still needed to send something. I was still not sure if I got scammed or not with this phone call, or maybe with the entire situation, but it felt very weird. Why did they want so much information? Why did they want to know the recipient’s name, not just the recipient’s email, and whether it was a relative, what the message was that I had written on the gift card, (It was very unoriginal: “Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and your family,”) and whether I had placed the original order myself?

Next Christmas, I think I’ll go way, way back to avoid all technology, if possible. No more e-gift cards. No more emails. No more phone calls giving out all my information to strangers in customer service. Maybe I’ll knit everyone a scarf. And maybe they can come and pick it up.

Mary Rupert, editor, uses the Internet, emails and social media every day in her work. To reach Mary, email [email protected].

Legislators to hold community forum Jan. 5 at library

The Wyandotte County Legislative Delegation will hold a community forum at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 5, at the West Wyandotte Branch Library, community room, 1737 N. 82nd, Kansas City, Kan.

The public may attend and discuss legislative issues with the local legislators before this year’s legislative session starts.

Legislators plan to return to Topeka to start the session on Monday, Jan. 11.

State Rep. Kathy Wolfe Moore, D-36th Dist., the head of the Wyandotte County legislative delegation, said the biggest issue at the Legislature this year will probably be the state budget, as it continues to be in the red.

Also, she anticipates that Osawatomie state hospital will continue to be an important issue. Recently, federal officials cut off Medicare payments to the state hospital after security concerns surfaced.

While the state’s tax plan should be a big issue, she said there has been talk that it will not be discussed in the Legislature this year because it is an election year.

Recently, local legislators attended a Unified Government meeting where the UG’s legislative platform was discussed.

At the top of the UG’s legislative priorities is a repeal of the property tax lid approved in 2015. According to the UG’s legislative platform, the property tax lid “is unworkable, unnecessary, harms economic development and violates the spirit of small government, local control and the Home Rule Amendment of the Kansas Constitution.”

At that meeting with legislators, Mayor Mark Holland said that it is an erroneous belief that local governments are spending too much. He said the property tax lid was not needed because residents vote for commissioners, who then vote on a budget, and set the mill levy. The public will vote for someone else if they do not like the actions of their elected officials, he said.

With a sales tax revenue bond payoff anticipated in 2017, one of the hopes of the local officials was to reduce the property tax, Mayor Holland said.

“The state has just disincentivized us from lowering our property taxes,” he said. Local officials have to consider that if they lower property taxes this year, then because of the tax lid the next year they could not raise them again if needed. The mayor said the tax lid is anti-growth, because economic development causes growth, but local communities will be unable to increase revenues to provide services such as increased police and fire protection to serve that growth.

The UG’s second priority, according to its legislative platform, is to renew a partnership and cooperative spirit with state and local governments to address the issue of increasing property taxes caused by the shifting of costs from state government to local governments and schools. “The Kansas Legislature should not continue solving its budget shortfalls by taking revenues belonging to or legally obligated to city and county governments and should reject placing more of the burden for funding education on local taxpayers,” the UG’s legislative platform stated.

The UG’s legislative platform contained several other positions on issues.

Two KCK residents in I-35 crash

Two Kansas City, Kan., residents were taken to the hospital after a crash at 5:21 p.m. Dec. 29 on I-35 near Antioch Road in Johnson County.

The two were in an Acura that was northbound on I-35 when traffic was slowing, a trooper’s report stated.

A GMC vehicle driven by a 33-year-old Overland Park, Kan., man ran into the back of a a Saturn Vue, which then struck the back of the Acura, the report stated.

In the Acura, a 25-year-old Kansas City, Kan., man and a 24-year-old Kansas City, Kan., woman had possible injuries and were taken to a hospital, the crash report stated.

The driver of the Vue, a 34-year-old Olathe, Kan., woman, was taken to the hospital with a possible injury, according to the trooper’s report.

The GMC driver was not injured, according to the report.