To be filed

Life doesn’t get any easier

I apologize for my errant behaviour on this website. I’ve been MIA for weeks and I have a good reason. I recently moved apartments (again) and transferred my life from one apartment to another. In this day and age, I would have imagined this process to be simple and doable at my fingertips and keypad. Unfortunately, not so. Changing addresses at the post office, changing addresses with banks and credit card companies, choosing internet service provider, choosing cable TV provider, dealing with their inconsistencies and the added stress of new furniture and dealing with little necessary items like garbage bags and cleaning supplies!

In midst of this, Commerce Bank decided to generously drop $1100 into my account. Perplexed, I called to find out when and what the money was for. I wondered if my father had made a wire transfer from India that he forgot to mention. So the customer service rep. tells me, the $1100 is a check for $500 and a money order for $600. I was stunned. I didn’t remember depositing a money order or a check in my account, so I asked him to read the names on the checks. KINAL SHAH- he spells them out for me. Realization and disbelief struck me at once.

Commerce had deposited my SISTER’s money in my account!! Granted, we have similar sounding names. Does that mean Mary Watkins of Brooklyn has to worry about having her money deposited into Mary Watkins of Manhattan’s account?!  And the funny thing is, my sister made these deposits at a teller! Unlike me, she actually goes to a bank, deals with teh teller, and writes a deposit ticket. She wrote her social security number and her bank account number on her deposit ticket and yet, her teller chose to put my sister’s money in my account.

My sister didn’t even know about this until I called her and asked her to stop payment on all her checks. Especially her rent check. While the matter was sorted out in the next few hours, I wonder what would’ve happened if neither of us had noticed it. Honestly, I have never heard a more bizarre story, leave alone, experience one.

So between making calls to Commerce to set my account straight and dealing with customer service for Verizon to just get me my internet, I’ve no motivation for anything else. I just want my life in order  and apparently, that’s too much to ask for!

Oh and I can’t change my address on Commerce Bank’s website. I have to call someone and verify it to have them change my address. Times like tehse, I think my other bank accounts and credit card companies for atleast making this process easier!

This morning, I’ve been on the phone with Verizon for 2 hours. And close to 6 hours if I take into account all the calls I’ve been making them in the last 2 weeks. I signed up for their dry loop internet service and recieved my modem and stuff last week. But had no internet. I called and called and they kept asking me to troubleshoot and then a supervisor told me something was blocking my connection so he would send someone to my apartment to fix it. Nothing happens, no one arrives and no one calls. I called again this morning, and literally begged the customer service rep. to allow me to speak to the same supervisor who I spoke with last night. Any longer, and I would have cried on the phone. I just wanted my internet to work!

You know, sometimes I wonder. My blog and the blogs I follow and the news I read and teh work I do is all about the fantastic future, the technology, the new trends and an easier, faster life. But I wonder if we will ever get to it. Not at this rate, not if we are bogged down with picking and waiting for cable and internet and not if banks keep requring me to call them so they can wax eloquent about their customer service.

Nope. Definitely not at this rate.