nonnihil (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} nonnihil) wrote,@ 2009-01-02 18:56:00 |
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Dear Fidelity
Dear Fidelity:
First of all, let's get the simple stuff out of the way. I do not hate you for losing a lot of my money. Everybody loses money now and then, and I wouldn't have entrusted you with it if I weren't willing to take a risk. Times are hard, and I appreciate that. So I don't hate you for losing lots of my money.
I do, however, hate you for absolutely everything else.
Your customer service is crap. Your databases are crap. Your website is warmed-over crap. Your internal policies are crap, your account management is crap, and the absolute nicest and most generous thing I can say about your phone system is that your hold music is crap.
Let us get a few things clear. First, my social security number. You know it. You've had it for, oh, eight years now. It has been correctly entered into your system at least four times by authoritative sources, plus of course all of the eight billion times I had to enter it back when it was the only username you allowed. So while I'm sure there is a good reason that you decided inexplicably and in one place to switch one digit of it, it escapes me. I'm willing to bet, though that your excuses -- blaming the computer, blaming our payroll provider (which is also, coincidentally, Fidelity), blaming me -- are wrong. I'm guessing that your recent layoffs somehow neglected to get rid of fumble-fingered fuckwits who think that manually mucking in your mountainous account database is a magnificent occupation.
Speaking of accounts -- I have one. Not zero, unless you are considering stealing the meager remaining contents of my retirement accounts, or two, unless the alternate-social-security-number version of me (who is probably is probably recognizable by his evil-twin goatee) is gainfully employed somewhere. Given that you restrict people to one account per SSN, probably telling me to create a new account with you was not a wise or sensible answer. (Of course, I imagine it worked better for you, given that you did it with the wrong number.) Now, I know that counting to one is a problem for you guys -- you inexplicably duplicated my IRA, too, and were unable to delete the extra, leaving me permanently with a $0 IRA listed on your pages. But I would suggest that any of a variety of local preschools would be willing to teach you the trick. It helps if you have one finger to count; I can volunteer a particular one of mine for the task.
Now, I understand that you are fond of the past -- after all, your company's glory days occurred in it. But I have not been employed by the felonious halfwits and backstabbing careerists at Comverse for six -- six wonderful -- years. That they apparently set some "gasp in surprise and tell the customer that he is fucked" bit on my account is, regrettably, unsurprising. That such a bit should be visible to each and every one of your customer support people but not to your actual customer is only natural. That you should have no ability or authority to change it is to be expected. What is less clear to me is why your system would have such a bit in the first place. Maybe this is just my autodidact DBM self speaking, but I would in general prefer to leave out the "your previous employer can screw up all of your future 401k's" feature, or at least deactivate it for companies like Comverse that were publicly and visibly run by SATAN. Given that it is you who want my money, rather than vice versa, I would assert that some confusing information that you have mysterious gleaned about me from a previous employer is your rather than my problem.
Of course, none of these things should be a problem. A quick call to customer support should fix these things right up. Well... if there were customer support to call. But I can't help but notice that you neglected to put that phone number on your website. There's the number for new enrollees, and a number for companies to call, but no number for people who are already your damned (and oh are we damned) customers! Well, hm, I'll just complain on your little complaints form... oh. That doesn't work. "Illegal characters in your message" even when I leave the message blank. I guess that any characters that might constitute a complaint have too much character for you melon-farming email form.
So, imagine for a moment that I've tracked down the phone number for your "401k Helpdesk." It is only natural, then, that they should never have heard of my employer. "Well, I'm going to have to use the advanced search" is possibly the least reassuring thing one can hear a helpdesk person say. And of course having failed to find (or even advanced find) my company, even with its group number in hand, of course you should ask the customer if perhaps his account is at a different Fidelity. You know, maybe Fidelity Of Russia or something. Of course the customer had to enter his username and password to even get this far, but that must be a coincidence. The right answer is to tell him that he needs to talk to the "retail desk" and transfer him to ten minutes of static-afflicted hold music followed by a loud screeching noise and an automated hang-up.
Now were said customer, with the aid of two expert bureaumancers and most of a day of pounding on your phone system, to finally keep your helpdesk people on the phone, here are some things that he might not appreciate hearing:
Now I know that it is an awful inconvenience on you to have to lose a lot of my money. Naturally you would like to help me out by refusing to take any more of it. But I would remind you that it is your job to take my money. It is the purpose of your business. It is, dare I say it, a goal toward which we expect you to show some fidelity. So your aggrieved disinterest in getting more thousands of dollars of my money is really a bit of a surprise. That your people, having created a problem that prevents me giving you money, should show utter disinterest in correcting it is rather confusing. Is it possible that you have accidentally reversed the lists of which half of your company to lay off, and have retained only the apathetic, incompetent, and confused?
...and speaking of confused, let's talk about email statements. I want them. I opted in to them, a fact which concerning corporate emails is nearly unique in the world. I gave you an email address that has been happily used by the entire remainder of the known universe for ten years. And yet every month -- twice! -- you send me a paper letter explaining that my email is bouncing. I am reasonably sure that I would have noticed if I had stopped getting ads for herbal supplements with punctuation and digits in their names. You seem to be the only people on the planet not capable of emailing me.
Anyway, thanks for all your support. Should instant karma cause the entire population of your 401k "Helpdesk" to fall down a well, don't hesitate to call: I am sure I can find some quick-set concrete to throw down after them.
Many thanks,
--nonnihil
Dear Fidelity:
First of all, let's get the simple stuff out of the way. I do not hate you for losing a lot of my money. Everybody loses money now and then, and I wouldn't have entrusted you with it if I weren't willing to take a risk. Times are hard, and I appreciate that. So I don't hate you for losing lots of my money.
I do, however, hate you for absolutely everything else.
Your customer service is crap. Your databases are crap. Your website is warmed-over crap. Your internal policies are crap, your account management is crap, and the absolute nicest and most generous thing I can say about your phone system is that your hold music is crap.
Let us get a few things clear. First, my social security number. You know it. You've had it for, oh, eight years now. It has been correctly entered into your system at least four times by authoritative sources, plus of course all of the eight billion times I had to enter it back when it was the only username you allowed. So while I'm sure there is a good reason that you decided inexplicably and in one place to switch one digit of it, it escapes me. I'm willing to bet, though that your excuses -- blaming the computer, blaming our payroll provider (which is also, coincidentally, Fidelity), blaming me -- are wrong. I'm guessing that your recent layoffs somehow neglected to get rid of fumble-fingered fuckwits who think that manually mucking in your mountainous account database is a magnificent occupation.
Speaking of accounts -- I have one. Not zero, unless you are considering stealing the meager remaining contents of my retirement accounts, or two, unless the alternate-social-security-number version of me (who is probably is probably recognizable by his evil-twin goatee) is gainfully employed somewhere. Given that you restrict people to one account per SSN, probably telling me to create a new account with you was not a wise or sensible answer. (Of course, I imagine it worked better for you, given that you did it with the wrong number.) Now, I know that counting to one is a problem for you guys -- you inexplicably duplicated my IRA, too, and were unable to delete the extra, leaving me permanently with a $0 IRA listed on your pages. But I would suggest that any of a variety of local preschools would be willing to teach you the trick. It helps if you have one finger to count; I can volunteer a particular one of mine for the task.
Now, I understand that you are fond of the past -- after all, your company's glory days occurred in it. But I have not been employed by the felonious halfwits and backstabbing careerists at Comverse for six -- six wonderful -- years. That they apparently set some "gasp in surprise and tell the customer that he is fucked" bit on my account is, regrettably, unsurprising. That such a bit should be visible to each and every one of your customer support people but not to your actual customer is only natural. That you should have no ability or authority to change it is to be expected. What is less clear to me is why your system would have such a bit in the first place. Maybe this is just my autodidact DBM self speaking, but I would in general prefer to leave out the "your previous employer can screw up all of your future 401k's" feature, or at least deactivate it for companies like Comverse that were publicly and visibly run by SATAN. Given that it is you who want my money, rather than vice versa, I would assert that some confusing information that you have mysterious gleaned about me from a previous employer is your rather than my problem.
Of course, none of these things should be a problem. A quick call to customer support should fix these things right up. Well... if there were customer support to call. But I can't help but notice that you neglected to put that phone number on your website. There's the number for new enrollees, and a number for companies to call, but no number for people who are already your damned (and oh are we damned) customers! Well, hm, I'll just complain on your little complaints form... oh. That doesn't work. "Illegal characters in your message" even when I leave the message blank. I guess that any characters that might constitute a complaint have too much character for you melon-farming email form.
So, imagine for a moment that I've tracked down the phone number for your "401k Helpdesk." It is only natural, then, that they should never have heard of my employer. "Well, I'm going to have to use the advanced search" is possibly the least reassuring thing one can hear a helpdesk person say. And of course having failed to find (or even advanced find) my company, even with its group number in hand, of course you should ask the customer if perhaps his account is at a different Fidelity. You know, maybe Fidelity Of Russia or something. Of course the customer had to enter his username and password to even get this far, but that must be a coincidence. The right answer is to tell him that he needs to talk to the "retail desk" and transfer him to ten minutes of static-afflicted hold music followed by a loud screeching noise and an automated hang-up.
Now were said customer, with the aid of two expert bureaumancers and most of a day of pounding on your phone system, to finally keep your helpdesk people on the phone, here are some things that he might not appreciate hearing:
- That Fidelity Payroll Services cannot talk to him but only to his Benefits Manager ('cause of security)...
- That Fidelity 401k Helpdesk can talk to him but not his Benefits Manager (privacy, of course)...
- ...and under no circumstances can Payroll and Helpdesk talk to each other, lest (I presume) the universe explode...
- ...and so he and his Benefits Manager must now play an elaborate game of telephone between these two groups, each of which will naturally blame the other, for five hours.
- [Edit] (just remembered -- and, just for laughs, you have my postal address wrong every database you can find, but not all of them, as you definitely have the right address for sending me infinite numbers of spurious complaints about me email address...)
- [Edit] (...which would be no problem except that zip code is one of your security questions, and each part of your company seems to have picked randomly from the available set)
Now I know that it is an awful inconvenience on you to have to lose a lot of my money. Naturally you would like to help me out by refusing to take any more of it. But I would remind you that it is your job to take my money. It is the purpose of your business. It is, dare I say it, a goal toward which we expect you to show some fidelity. So your aggrieved disinterest in getting more thousands of dollars of my money is really a bit of a surprise. That your people, having created a problem that prevents me giving you money, should show utter disinterest in correcting it is rather confusing. Is it possible that you have accidentally reversed the lists of which half of your company to lay off, and have retained only the apathetic, incompetent, and confused?
...and speaking of confused, let's talk about email statements. I want them. I opted in to them, a fact which concerning corporate emails is nearly unique in the world. I gave you an email address that has been happily used by the entire remainder of the known universe for ten years. And yet every month -- twice! -- you send me a paper letter explaining that my email is bouncing. I am reasonably sure that I would have noticed if I had stopped getting ads for herbal supplements with punctuation and digits in their names. You seem to be the only people on the planet not capable of emailing me.
Anyway, thanks for all your support. Should instant karma cause the entire population of your 401k "Helpdesk" to fall down a well, don't hesitate to call: I am sure I can find some quick-set concrete to throw down after them.
Many thanks,
--nonnihil
