Today, I took a look at the confirmation email and noticed that the expected delivery date is Friday, February 26 – that’s four days from my purchase date!!

I became more frustrated when it took me a good 14 minutes to find a phone number on Amazon.com. They pretty much tell the consumer to contact them via other mediums BUT a phone call. I don’t want to send Amazon an email. I want to speak to a human on the phone and get my issue resolved immediately.

Eventually, I found their customer service number and my call was answered within two minutes of calling – obviously, my calling resulted in a quicker response.

I told the representative about my paying for one day shipping and finding out I had to wait an extra three days and how unacceptable that was. He pointed me to a sentence beside the product image that read, in green, “In stock but may require an extra 1-2 days to process.” Ok, where did that sentence come from? Why is it green and not red? Why is it next to the product image and not in the section where I choose my method of shipping?

I was very upset and told the representative that I have no choice but to wait to receive my camera, but that camera would be the last purchase I make with the company. He then went on to pitch other in-stock cameras to me! I don’t need to be pitched on something that’s not what I want.

He put me on hold to speak to his supervisor and came back with a solution: they would refund me the amount I paid for one day shipping, but they couldn’t expedite the actual delivery of the camera. I accepted their offer. It only seems fair that I not pay for what I’m not getting. Regardless, I’m going to have to wait to receive my camera.

While I’m not 100% happy with the phone call, I’m glad they took my frustration into consideration and offered some kind of solution.

Amazon, I know how revolutionary you’ve been with your check out process, but it baffles me that you wouldn’t put messages such as “In stock but may require an extra 1-2 days to process” within your “Choose your shipping options” page. I understand that as a consumer I should read everything on the page before purchasing, but a little help from you in repeating an important message like that would be extremely helpful. Also, if it’s important, maybe using red as opposed to green as your font color would be more attention-grabbing.

Luckily, I was able to connect with the outside world via Twitter on my phone.

After complaining about Comcasts’ services being down on Twitter, @ComcastBill replied apologizing for my situation and offering to help. (I started following him after he showed his sense of humor by saying that he actually can’t help Cowboys fans – nothing makes me happier than someone who wants to connect/help and actually takes the time to read my short bio).

I told @ComcastBill the city I live in, but that wasn’t enough information for him to figure out what the problem was. He requested my detailed address via Direct Message. Now, here’s where I was slightly torn. I knew that he wouldn’t be able to help me unless I gave him more information, but how did I know he was a legitimate Comcast representative? Just because his Twitter handle had “Comcast” in it doesn’t guarantee he is who he says he is.

I’m more than sure he works for Comcast, but with all the fraud and robberies going on, I’m just not willing to take the risk of randomly handing out my address to anyone, especially online.

I gave @ComcastBill the city I live in, but that’s as far I was willing to go. Being that my city was all over the news for being under water, I assumed the reason for my being disconnected and didn’t stress about it too much.

However, this got me thinking about how useful certain companies, like Comcast, may find Social Media. When customer service requires personal customer information, how efficient could their help be if people don’t trust the medium being used?

UPDATE: I just showed @ComcastBill this post and he said that customers can always look at @ComcastCares‘ to see a list of legitimate Comcast employees. While the list (at the bottom left of the screen) is cut off, this definitely helps establish just a little more trust in the people behind these accounts.

I would still highly advise people to think twice before giving out any personal information unless you’re 100% sure you’re speaking to the right person.

It’s not me, it’s you. You’ve changed and I no longer recognize you.

I’ve been faithful to you for the past 10 years and you’ve satisfied me in return. Your communication skills were impeccable and your return on investment was decent. I’ve known of better opportunities, but chose to stay with you due to our long and dedicated relationship. But in the last few months, you have gone through some changes that I no longer wish to be a part of.

Your terrific communication skills have diminished and you went from being readily available to my having to go through various recordings in order to get to one of your non-helpful representatives. And my benefits of dedicating 10 years with you have diminished to what is now barely existent.

Sadly, all of these changes just so happened to coincide with your name changing from Washington Mutual to Chase.

Therefore, I’m sorry to say that our relationship as far as my savings account must now come to an end. You no longer make me happy and I do deserve better.

It’s been great, but I’m moving on to another institution that seems to value me more than you ever did.

I have six Spaces (the equivalent to six different desktops on one computer) open on my computer and have assigned all Microsoft Office documents to open in one particular Space, but it seems that MS Office doesn’t like its assigned Space. The document I’m usually working on loves to move and I have to search through five different Spaces to locate it.

Amidst my frustration, I turned to Twitter and posted: “I HATE, HATE, HATE microsoft office (I hate it so much, it doesn’t even deserve to be treated like a proper noun) HATE it!!!”

When Tweetdeck announced that I had a reply, I checked it and @kelbyj with a bio reading “Marketing/AR @ Microsoft” responded to me saying: “@AgustinaP what happened to make you hate Office so much? Can I help?”

I thought, “Cool! This is the first time Customer Service comes to me! Thanks Twitter!”

I explained to @kelbyj how my documents moves around and he replied about 20 minutes later: “@AgustinaP seeing if I can find you a recommendation from the Mac Office product folks…”

I eagerly awaited his response, but when I got it, I was let down. @kelbyj: “It’s actually a Mac OS Spaces issue. Here’s a blog post that might be helpful: http://bit.ly/45f9vW”

First of all, I felt slightly offended that he would say the problem was with my Mac. I try my very best to keep my computer clean and running perfectly.

Second, should I be surprised that someone from Microsoft would say the problem is with Mac?

And third, @kelbyj, why did you send me that link? Have you read it? I’m no computer software genius, but that link leads me to a blog that doesn’t look like a Microsoft or Apple blog. Who wrote that and why should I listen to what that person says? And most importantly, the post is long, too long for me to care to read past the first paragraph, especially when that first paragraph doesn’t directly address my problem.

I’m very disappointed. I almost felt like Microsoft was listening to me and trying to help. All they did was waste my time and give me false expectations.

Sigh.