Instant Gratification

I've decided that the internet is highly to blame for our need for instant gratification. I will immediately admit that when something on-line doesn't work as smoothly as advertised or as instantly I get highly annoyed. Most of my annoyance, I think, is completely warranted and legitimate. I will explain:

We've all been told over and over that the best way to go with bill paying is to go paperless. I'm all for saving the trees and ink that gets wasted on pages and pages of bills. Going paperless is supposed to simplify everyone's lives and we're not supposed to worry about paying these bills anymore, because they are automatically pulled out of your checking/savings/or some other account. What happens when there's a glitch in the system though?

Twice this month I've had a glitch negatively effect my finances. Every single month for the past year I've had my credit card bill automatically paid and I've never had an issue--until now that is. I followed the lovely instructions that my credit institution provided me, telling me that I should go in and check all of my settings and make any updates that were necessary. I did that. I also decided to simply change my payment date (nothing huge, just a few days). I even thought I was being smart about this decision and made sure that this update wouldn't effect my current billing cycle. I signed out and went on my merry way. And then the glitch hit me 1 month later. The online system decided to change my current billing cycle! This wasn't supposed to happen. I called this institution to see what could be done. They were apologetic and agreed with me that this shouldn't have happened because I had posted the date I wanted everything to go into effect. How did they explain this situation to me? "I'm sorry, there was a minor glitch in the system. It shouldn't happen in the future Ms. Woods." Their use of shouldn't didn't leave me with much confidence in making any future updates to my account.

My second glitch experience goes well beyond annoyance. I will even give you the name of the institution to blame for this issue, Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo loves to advertise all of the online capabilities that they have. They fail to tell you that the majority of the time their systems are down and highly unreliable. I have been trying to sign a master promissory note for 5 days. I have been filling in all of my information in this nicely designed box that's supposed to make student's lives easier. I correctly insert my identifying numbers and press submit. A nice little message pops up telling me that my identifying numbers are nowhere to be found in their system and to "please" give them a call for further instructions. I called. I got to talk to a very nice woman who was very helpful and went well out of her way to try to fix the problem. Nothing was working and what made both her and I upset was the fact that her computer screen said everything was filled out correctly, but for some reason just wasn't going through. She nicely called this a "glitch" and to try again later and on a different computer and if nothing worked, to call back and someone would get to the bottom of this issue.

I called back. This call did not go so well. This issue can be blamed on poor customer service skills. This new helper told me I was filling in the boxes wrong and in a very snippy, know-it-all tone told me she "needed" to walk me through the process. I told her that I understood the process and that there was a "glitch" in the system that wasn't accepting my information. She got angry with me so I requested to speak with her supervisor. She put me on hold for 11 minutes (I really timed it)and then told me she was sorry and that she forgot I was on hold. This must have been a glitch, right? When I finally got to talk to her supervisor she told me that whoever told me that there was a "glitch" in the system was incorrect and that any problems with the Wells Fargo site were being taken care of. I do believe that that is an admittance to a glitch in the system.

I never was able to get the instant gratification that was guaranteed to me through either of these fine institutions websites. These institutions need to realize that when guaranteeing people that something is going to be easier and much more efficient, that people will become upset when "glitches" appear. Especially when dealing with money.