What a Wuss

So, you go to bed and have a night's sleep (is four hours a night's sleep?) and you wake up, not as mad as yesterday and decide to be nice on the phone. You see, I really didn't want to cancel my subscription to Realms of Fantasy. I think it's a totally under-appreciated magazine in the field. Content-wise, design-wise, for my money, it's the most interesting thing we've got. And as I thought about it, I wondered if I had checked to have the thing auto-renew so I wouldn't have to worry about it.

I did. And now I've got it transferred to the credit card I'm going to be keeping, so I can keep receiving Realms of Fantasy. And the woman I spoke to today was very helpful in refunding the one charge and getting things moved over to the new card.

And Capital One was also very nice. The people I talk to are always extremely helpful and nice. The e-mails, letters, etc. I get from Capital One, not so much. The word choice in the Capital One correspondence always felt very accusatory. I always felt, at best that I was stupid, and at worst that I was a criminal when I got stuff from them. And it's too bad I've had such a sour experience; I love their commercials. Their commercials are what prompted me to apply for one of their cards to begin with. But it didn't work out.

What happened was that I had the -0.55 balance at Capital One, and credit takes 90 days to amortize. Of course, as things work for me, I was almost done with the 90 days (and the card getting officially closed) when the charge from Realms of Fantasy came through.

Now, I should have called when I first saw the -0.55 balance, and the Capital One people would have explained to me what was happening. They could have either written the amount off or issued a refund check. But, I decided to do nothing. I figured their system would catch up with the balance at some point. And I also assumed I had moved all my automated billing off the card. I hadn't. And that's no one's fault but mine. I tend to not do automated billing for this exact reason.

Nonetheless, things are being taken care of. And I got to start the day being nice. Yes, I wussed out. But it was better to be able to laugh with the customer service people, rather than yell at them about something they didn't do. I got what I wanted, and I didn't have to be a jerk and raise my blood pressure and make someone else upset and make an ass of myself in my office where everyone can hear me.

I must be getting old.