System Failure - Part 2

A few months back I posted a rant about having to have a frequent flyer account in order to get my new credit card, but not being able to join frequent flyers without a credit card. I waxed lyrical with my usual style and finesse about how frustrating and ridiculous it was that the process of paying to join up with a cash payment was so much more complicated than by credit card. But in the end, I came away with both an account and an awards card with which to stock it, so the extra effort, although unnecessary in my opinion, was worth it.

Or so I thought. This week I've gotten myself to the stage of booking flights for various travels at the end of the year. So I thought to myself, let's see how many frequent flyer points I can string together.

The first place I looked was my credit card awards scheme. Unfortunately I wasn't able to access my awards because of some clerical error with the bank. I went into my nearest Commonwealth Bank branch office and spoke with a customer service specialist (easily the most pretentious title I've come across this week). She rang up an office somewhere else and spoke to someone about something and got it all sorted out for me. I still don't have any award points, but I can rest assured that the missing credit will show up (presumably by magic) after one or two statements. I get statements monthly, so they should show up some time in November. Just in time to be too late.

"Oh well," I thought to myself, "I'll just see how many points I've earned from flying all over the country as I generally do." So I logged on to the Qantas Frequent Flyer website and received a message to say that the website was experiencing technical difficulties and to check back later. When I received this message for the third day in a row, I got suspicious, so I called the Qantas enquiries line and got myself put through to Frequent Flyers.

It turned out that my Frequent Flyers account had been deactivated. Imagine my surprise. They hadn't received any notice of payment, so rather than contact me and ask why I hadn't paid, they just closed the account. When I informed the lady at Frequent Flyers that I had paid, she clicked an extra link to check the details and saw that there was a note about a cash payment after all. But she couldn't reactivate the account from there. Oh no, I'd have to head back into the Sydney Qantas office and speak with the staff there.

So I did. I fronted up again and told the front desk lady that I needed to speak with someone about my Frequent Flyers account, because it had been erroneously deactivated. She told in a matter-of-fact manner that I was in the wrong place, and suggested that I use the office phone to call the Frequent Flyer office. I'm sure you can imagine the dangerously level tone my voice took on (Unless you're someone who hasn't met me, but are just reading my blog for some reason, in which case ... hi!) as I told her that it was the Frequent Flyer office that had sent me to her in the first place. She told me that that couldn't possibly be right (apparently I was either lying to her or completely stupid), and to call the Frequent Flyer office.

So I did. And, just as I had told the Qantas office lady, the Frequent Flyer lady told me I should go in to the office that I had signed up at to clear the matter up.
"Well, I'm already there," I told her, "And they told me to call you."

I then had the vindictive pleasure of setting the two ladies against each other, as the Frequent Flyer lady asked to speak with the Qantas Office lady.

A couple of hours and a trip to the record archives in the basement later, the whole mess was sorted out. Apparently everyone in the process had followed the appropriate procedures, and the receipt for the original payment had just "fallen through the cracks" somehow. Using a meaningless cliché to explain what had happened to me didn't quite leave me a satisfied customer. I could have pointed out that databases don't actually have cracks, since they don't exist as actual spatial objects, but I was just happy to have the whole thing sorted out, so I let it slide.

I am happy to report that I now have almost enough points to fly from Sydney to Dubbo.

Far from home



Garry with 2 Rs

Saving the World

A friend of mine in Sydney has got me onto the fair-trade chocolate band wagon. Well... when I say onto, what I really mean is ambling alongside the wagon, trying to figure out where it's going. My point is I've taken to deliberately buying fair-trade chocolate over not fair-trade chocolate. And furthermore, I think that's the first time in quite a while I've managed to say "my point is" in the third sentence of a blog post. Usually it comes in somewhere in the third or fourth paragraph, depending on how many irrelevant tangents I've diverted myself onto. Which reminds me, I need to shift the sandwiches from the dining room table to the cabinet. I'm not into statements like "If you eat non fair-trade chocolate, that means you support child slavery, you filthy nazi child-hating elitist backwards homophobic lazy bigoted communist ignoramus!" I've just decided that when I have the choice (which is most of the time), choosing to pay a bit more for chocolate in order to support farmers in difficult circumstances can only be a positive thing.

If all that was completely meaningless to you, you can check out the following links:

Fair trade chocolate
Bandwagon
Cabinet

As an interesting (well...) consequence of this, I've been developing quite a rapport (which is to say flirting (but not actually flirting (well... (this set of parentheses is completely redundant (as are these))))) with the girl who works in the Oxfam shop that I buy my fair-trade chocolate from.

It all started out innocently (well...) enough. I strolled absent-mindedly through the door, and our eyes met for just a moment. Across a deserted shop. The melodious smulch of a George Michael song began to play in the background, and the young shop assistant stepped outside to ask him to stop, as he did not have a busking licence. Meanwhile, I started browsing the chocolate shelf. The assistant returned from admonishing the itinerant crooner and uttered the words that will forever linger in my lonely soul:

"Can I help you, there?"

And so it began. I had a hard time convincing her that the armfuls of chocolate I was buying were not all for me. I was buying supplies for our bible study group. No, really. I felt a little out of place in the Oxfam shop; it's all so clean and earthy (is that a contradiction?) that it makes me fell like my synthetic clothing is somehow polluting the aura of the place. And I don't even know what an aura is. But I reckon Christine does.

Her name, by the way, isn't Christine. Actually I don't know what her name is. We're still just keeping the relationship at the 'haven't actually formally introduced ourselves' level.

So I did what I always do when I'm feeling out of place and unsure of myself; I defaulted to the classical Garry façade persona; goofy, yet strangely compelling; clueless, yet inexplicably knowledgeable; flagrant, yet captivatingly mysterious; ridiculous, yet irresistibly charming; literate, yet somehow unable to stop using semicolons.

It has been said that this persona is actually just me being myself, but I'm not convinced. I'm just not that charming.

And the problem with that approach is that it relies on everything being fresh and at least a little bit unusual. But I have now been back to the shop on a semi-regular basis and it´s becoming dangerously habitual, which means in order to make the façade work, I need to come up with a new (well...) and creative way to be suitably off the wall every time I go in there. My latest effort looked something like this:

Christine: Hello again.
Garry: Hi.
Christine: Looking for more chocolate?
Garry: (looking to throw her off her game from the outset) Well, now that's just a huge assumption. How can you just assume that I'm here for chocolate?
Christine: Are you?
Garry: ... Yes. (moves to the chocolate shelf, but...) "Hey! You've moved it!"
Christine: Yep, it's over here now.
Garry: Right. (grabs some chocolate) Found it. (moves to cash register)
Christine: Is that all?
Garry: That's all for today
Christine: Would you like an environmentally friendly calico shopping bag?
Garry: Nah, that's ok, thanks.
Christine: That's seven eighty-five, please. (Garry proffers his eftpos card) I'm sorry, there's a ten dollar minimum on eftpos
Garry: Right... What have you got that costs two dollars and fifteen cents?
Christine: Our environmentally friendly calico shopping bags cost two dollars fifty each. And you'll get the added satisfaction of knowing you're saving the world.
Garry: With a shopping bag?
Christine: Yes.
Garry: Does it have magical powers?
Christine: No, but if you shop with it, then we won't need to use plastic bags any more.
Garry: (well...) Right... (types in his PIN) You know, I might have been coming in here to buy some babushka dolls, for all you know.
Christine: You could have been. Maybe next time.
Garry: Yeah... ... Well... Have a nice day.
Christine: Bye.

Yeah, it didn't really play out quite the way I had envisioned. I think next time I'm just going to burst in and ask, before she has a chance to mention chocolate, whether she has in stock any of those wooden hand carvings of a Chinese man with a fishing net.

Far from home



Garry with 2 Rs