An anecdote

The other day I had one of those experiences that makes you say "wow, this is a semi-interesting anecdote that, if spun the right way, really illuminates the modern human experience."  When this happens to a free-lance journalist, the Bat-phone starts ringing at Slate.com.  When this happens to me, I post about it on my blog.

The other day I got a pretty scary voicemail on my cell phone from BGE.  "The account linked to this phone number will be denied service unless payment is made immediately."  Now, I was pretty certain that I hadn't accidentally forgotten to pay the gas and electric bill for the last few months, but that isn't the kind of message you ignore.

So I call the phone number that they mention in the message, enter my account number, and learn that my bill has been paid in full (just as I thought).  Nonetheless, that voicemail was a mystery and I'd rather not have my electricity accidentally turned off and have to explain to my roommates why all their food is rotting in the fridge.

Quick divergence - anyone else hate how hard it is to get ahold of BGE when you want to talk to a person?  First you have to wait until normal business hours, then you have to find the secret number on the BGE website.

Step 1 - Do not visit the page headlined "Contact Us."  That just leads you to one of those web forms that allows BGE to conveniently ignore you.  Seriously, there should be a special kind of purgatory (yes, just purgatory, this isn't that big of a sin) dedicated to companies that don't publish a phone number at all, just a web form for questions.  Have you ever been looking for information, run into one of those web forms and though "Hey!  This will make my life easier!  Instead of finding the information I need right now or talking to someone with that information, I can send a message into a black hole of accountability!"

Step 2 - Click on the "Customer Service" heading instead.

Step 3 - Careful!  You can try the 410-685-0123 number, but when I did it just rang for awhile and then went to someone's voicemail.  Yeah, like someone saying "Hey this is , leave a message and I'll get back to you."  No way to know if that's actually BGE.

Step 4 - Try calling 800-685-0123; after convincing the computer that you didn't accidentally call that number instead of the automated bill-payment-by-phone or balance-inquiry-by-phone number, you can be put on hold and eventually talk to a real person.

Is it me or was that too hard?  Here's my rule of thumb, if a company says that they're dedicated to customer service, but it takes me >5 minutes to get a representative on the line, they're full of shit.  Open challenge to all companies: I want to go from Google to talking to one of your representatives in 5 minutes or less.  This isn't rocket science, it's hiring a bunch of people to answer phones.

Ok, back to the story:  So it turns out that the account that was about to be shut off wasn't mine, but it was linked to my phone number.  Apparently whoever had signed up for the account had done it years ago, before  giving up the phone number that I now have on my cell phone.  This led me to think, what do I really know about this person who used to have my phone number:

• Their name is Wade or Wayne or something that starts with a W (based on the wrong number calls I got for a surprisingly long time.  I think I got a couple within the last six months).
• They have lived in the same location for at least 5.5 years (that's how long I've had this phone number).
• Based on the speech pattern of the people who inadvertently reached me, they are a lower-income, probably African-American, Baltimore native.  This is based on my aggregate impression over many wrong numbers.
• The are about to get their gas and electric shut off for non-payment.
• They aren't going to get a phone call to warn them.

There's an odd asymmetry in this relationship, I know a few things minor details about this guy's life but have no way to contact him.  He knows nothing about me, but can very easily reach me - he knows my phone number after all.