A funny thing happened with one of my credit accounts weeks ago and the department store can only offer absurd theories so far.
A couple of weeks ago, my mom alerted me to something fishy about one of my credit accounts. She called me to tell me that a department store sent a letter to me at my parents’ home. She said she thought it might be a check. Even more strange, the envelope was handwritten.
When’s the last time you received a handwritten note from a business. No, I’m not talking about one of those computer-printed envelopes that use a handwriting typeface. A person actually hand-wrote the address.
I told her to open the envelope and sure enough, it was a check. The check, she said had my name and my correct address, which is about 100 miles away from her. But they put this check in an envelope and sent it to my parents.
The check was in the amount of just over $10, the amount of a credit balance the card had carried for a couple of months. I knew about the credit balance. I returned clothes that shrank too much in laundry and the refund left me with a credit balance. No, $10 isn’t a lot of money. But if they’re careless with $10, they could be careless with other things.
And for the record, I haven’t lived at my parents’ home for 30 years. I opened the account just under four years ago. At that time, I was an apartment that’s across the street from my current home. And yes, I changed my address as soon as I moved into the new place. The January and February statements — and those before that — all came to my current, correct address.
My mom put the check in the mail to send to my correct address.
Naturally, in the meantime, I called the department store’s credit department to find out what went wrong.
Their answer was a ridiculous as it could get
I explained the situation to two different operators, neither of whom could explain it. While I waited to speak to the first one, I logged on to my credit card account. I don’t know what made me think to look, but I checked the billing address. Sure enough, it showed my parents’ address.
I told Agent 1 that I never gave the store or its credit division that old address. I wouldn’t have, since I opened the acount in 2020 and last lived at that address in 1994! Agent 1 had no explanation as to why it would have been changed.
I called back and got Agent 2 who provided two new pieces of information. That agent claimed they mailed a check in February. And then, someone called in to request the change to my address back on April 24 and they mailed a second check. Why two checks? He didn’t know. What happened to the first one? He didn’t know. Who called in back in April? He didn’t know.
In fact, he couldn’t tell me who made the request for the check or the request for a change of address, even though I’m the only person on the account. He checked my phone number and didn’t find any calls received from my number during that timeframe. He suggested that perhaps my parents called.
But my folks didn’t know you were sending me a check, I said. They didn’t even know I have a charge account with this store. And how would they even know who to call to make such a request?
Both agents offered to send a replacement check. I declined, explaining my mother already mailed it to me.
When all else fails…blast on social?
After getting nowhere with two different people, I took to X. It’s an unfortunate step more of us have to take these days to get the attention of someone at a company who might actually be interested in solving a problem.
You definitely shouldn’t have to do this with a company that controls one of your credit accounts. They should be on top of things to begin with.
Customers shouldn’t have to turn to social media sites to get someone to help resolve a problem. But sometimes, you call their call center to work your way through a maze of options to finally get a person. The person who finally answers doesn’t know anything and either won’t or can’t take the steps to figure it out.
I received a response fairly quickly from someone asking that I send a private message. I did, giving them details of my two calls. Their social media person promised that he’d let “the supervisor team” know and that someone would be in touch soon.
A supervisor called…and it didn’t go well
The supervisor who was supposed to call me with answers clearly hadn’t read the notes about my account before he called. He began asking me questions that were obviously already detailed in what he had. If he’d read it, he wouldn’t have had to waste my time.
I explained details that he then saw as he tried to keep up.
After offering no real answers, he suggested a ridiculous hypothesis: Maybe someone received my check but it had already expired and they called in to request a new check be sent. At that point, this same mysterious called supplied the “right” address.
I went Judge Judy on him at that point. I told him that I could think of three reasons right off the bat that his idea made no sense.
First, if someone — clearly the wrong person — received in April a check sent in February, it wouldn’t have expired. Checks generally expire either in 90 days or after a year. April isn’t 90 days away from February. So the check couldn’t have expired that quickly.
Second, if someone — the worng person — actually did receive the check, then it obviously didn’t go to the wrong address or they wouldn’t have had it in their hand to call about.
Third, if someone miraculously received the check sent to the “wrong” address and wanted to update it, why would they give an address I hadn’t lived in for 30 years? And how would they even know that address?!?
This “supervisor” then had a brainstorm: He’d just send a message to the worker who made the change of address and ask for more details about the call he says prompted that.
I’m sure this operator is going to remember that fine level of detail from one single call taken weeks ago. The person, predictably, didn’t immediately answer the supervisor’s message.
But the supervisor promised to be back in touch as soon as they had answers.
A week later, I’ve still not received a follow-up call.
But the supervisor did confirm one new detail: earlier that same day, they sent a new check — despite my telling both prior operators specifically not to. He said I should receive it within 22 days. Twenty-two days!?
Moral of the story: Watch your credit accounts
I’m not finished with this story. I’m reaching back out to the social media team for this company to let them know that the lack of answers is not an answer.
When the check finally arrived from my mom, I noticed something interesting: my address involves a “unit number,” a three -digit number after the street address, much like a mailbox number. But the printed check they mailed out in February cut off the last two digits. So the post office stamped it with a “return to sender” message, stating they couldn’t forward it.
So the wrong person didn’t receive an expired check. No one called to say they received an expired check in the mail. No one knew they sent out the check because no one received it.
Somehow, they let one of their employees take it upon themselves to update my address to one they’d never seen before. They didn’t bother to look at the check and compare it with the valid address on my account. If they had, they would have seen the two digits were missing. If the post office returned something I’d sent with a message about a bad address, that’s the first thing I’d check.
Somehow, that didn’t occur to them.
If these folks aren’t any more on top of things than this, what else might they mess up?
You have to check your credit accounts more carefully just as computers ought to make things more accurate than ever. It shouldn’t be that way…but nowadays, as more companies let their computers do their thinking for them, it seems to be the new norm.
