Monday, June 18, 2012

I Might As Well Bang My Head Against the Wall!

You know how sometimes when you are trying to do something by phone, and keep having to deal with a machine at the other end, you think, "If I could just get to talk to a real person, we could sort this out?"  Well don't be too sure about that.

Mind you, I wasn't on the phone, but was trying to sign up for something on the internet. It was one of those sites that don't let you put in a Post Office Box. You need to enter a street address.  I live in a small village and was having trouble because Canada Post does not recognize street addresses here. We have to have the proper box number on our mail or we  may never get it.  I finally wrote the company a message to tell them about this problem. 

I said, "I am trying to sign up, but your form requires a street address and your system sends me to canadapost.ca since it cannot verify my address. That's because we have Post Office Box numbers in this village, and Canada Post does not recognize our civic addresses. How can I sign up?"

I got a reply. "Unfortunately we do not accept PO Boxes as valid addresses for registration. This is for security reasons; we require civic addresses."

I tried again.  "But YOUR system will not accept my civic address!  I'm very disappointed."

I thought that must have worked as then she said, "Can you send me your civic address? I’ll see if it works on my end."  I figured she was going to override the system at her end and get me signed up, so I sent her my civic address.

I just got another message from her. It says, "I’m not finding your street listed; I’m sure it exists, but Canada Post does not recognize it because mail is send via PO Box.
I apologize for the inconvenience. "

Duh. That's what I was complaining about in the first place.  I thought I was dealing with a human being at the other end, but perhaps it's some sort of robot after all. 

At this point I can't remember what it was I was trying to sign up for anyway, and now I probably don't want to be bothered.

2 comments:

  1. I loved this blog! So true and we deal with this frequently. Particularly frustrating is part two from the post office - insisting that our mail has BOTH the street address and post box and if we don't do so - we get those big warnings written on the mail. Head shaking stuff all around!

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