“Press 1 for incompetence….”

So, I call up PG&E to make a payment on the gas/electricity for the Cupertino house. They have one of those voice-navigation phone systems (“say 'card' to pay by card; say 'check' to pay by check”) that for some reason I find really annoying. (Most of what I find I want to say to such systems are words they would likely not recognize, and which are not printable in a refined forum such as my blog 🙂 )

Anyway, I navigate through entering my account number and credit card number, but it keeps reporting that there's an error of some sort with my card number and perhaps I'd like to try entering it again. After a few rounds of this, I hang up and call back to talk to a human. After a five minute wait, I reach someone and mention that the pay-by-phone thing had trouble with my credit card, to which she replied “oh, it doesn't accept credit cards -- you need to use a debit card”.

Well geez, thanks for telling me. Why on earth didn't the pay-by-phone service thing say that credit cards aren't accepted?! How moronic.


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