(insert god awful long automated phone system that seems bent on having me know the extention-I-wish-to-contact)
"Good afternoon, Magma Communications. May I help you?"
"Yes, I wanted to reach tech support and see if someone can ping my router... to see if my connection is good."
"Certainly sir. What is your user name?"
"Corto... c-o-r-t-o"
"Oh... yes... lets see now... hmmm. Sir? I'm going to have to transfer you. It appears to be a billing issue."
"Pardon-y-moi??"
"One moment please... "
click, click...
"Hello, this is Stephanie. Mr. Braden?"
"Yes... what's this about a billing issue?"
"Well Sir... we have cut off your service due to non-payment."
""Scuse ME?"
"We've been trying to reach you since December."
"Hello? I have a phone... we're talking on it now? And an answering machine. Sorry, never heard from you."
"Well sir, we've been sending you email to your corto@magma.ca account."
"Yea... well I've never activated that mail account... You mean...In all this time it never occured to you to phone me?"
"Well no sir. We don't have the resources to telephone everybody who's credit card expires."
"Ok... part one: Here's my new cc number. Part two: here's my actual email address. Part three: So you have resources to try and acquire new customers but none to try to keep the ones you already have?"
"That's not my department sir."
Okidoki...
Sheesh.