Bots’ bead on bucks
Months ago, when I joined the 21st century by purchasing a smart phone and upgrading my phone service accordingly, my account was inadvertently overcharged $53. Two clerks made multiple phone calls to try to get my money back.
At last, the mailman delivered a plastic “Prepaid Mastercard” that is “loaded with the amount of the… overpayment.” Accompanying this card are four sheets of directions and disclaimers, one of which is printed in color. (Perhaps multi-colored ink no longer signifies the additional expense it once did, but the operation of my printer suggests otherwise.) And this all arrived in an envelope with postage affixed.
Somebody was paid (presumedly) to put this packet together and make sure it gets to me. It seems like this whole process probably cost the company more than the $53 I was inadvertently overcharged. Surely it would have been simpler to just credit my account. I do pay monthly for phone service. (Well, it’s automatically extracted via credit card.)
My dentist recently discovered I overpaid for my last visit. He sent me a check. No pages of explanation. No plastic cards to activate. How refreshingly old school.
The default that is now the cultural norm is to create waste. And confusion. And ultimately, surrender. This is my third pre-paid plastic card this year. The first was from a department store, and when I asked the clerk how to make it work, she had no idea. The card remains unused.
The second card required verification with a phone call. But the robot on the phone line required some secret code that I couldn’t determine. That card went in the trash.
I know that I am old and my technological reflexes are slower than some. But I’d bet even some young techno-wizards don’t want to deal with these cards. They’re irritants. Time wasters. Bad for the environment. My instincts are to revolt.
I’m not talking about a revolution to backtrack to the horse and buggy. Technology is lovely. I have all the news and other info I want at my fingertips. I frequently talk to my daughter in Australia—face-to-face! Siri keeps me from getting lost on confusing Arkansas backroads. If our technological advances can manage to guide my face and my car effortlessly from point A to point B, why can’t the same thing happen to my overpayment?
Perhaps the plastic card business is now such a well-oiled machine that it doesn’t, in fact, cost $53 to redirect my overpayment back to me. The method only appears cumbersome. And the entities sending these cards expect some of them to get tossed. The money never gets claimed. The rich get richer, and the people “inadvertently” ripped off get poorer.
Once upon a time I was double billed for an air conditioner I ordered online. It took days of phone calls to the chain store and the credit card company to get it straightened out. Each blamed the other for the snafu. While on the phone, some words came out of my mouth that shouldn’t have. The obvious impossibility of piercing the corporate veil for minor money turned me into a raging lunatic.
Clearly corporations aren’t really people, too, despite what congress has declared. But some people act like corporations. Maybe they’re all robots. A formidable army that works for free. And has a bead on all the bits of money people will consider too small to fight for—but will add up in the corporate coffers. Riches for the masters behind the curtain.