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].