Kafka Never Had It So Tough
Published October 2nd, 2009 | 
Recently, I changed ISPs.
Of course, that meant updating my email address not only with friends, but with every social networking site or company I do business with. For the most part, while it took some time to accomplish, it wasn’t that difficult to manage most places. All except for one place.
See, there’s this company that I occasionally write content for and they don’t have a very user-friendly website. What that meant was that there was no clear mechanism for me on their website to update my account information. After a couple of days of beating my head against a wall, I contacted their technical support with my problem.
Several days went by before anyone got back to me. I replied with all my new contact information and a request to update my account to reflect this new information. A few more days went by and I received an email stating that my information had been updated. Finally, I thought — since it had been more than a week (closer to two) since I made my initial request.
The next day, when I tried to log-in to their website, I could still only log-in with my old email address. Puzzled, I launched another support ticket. This time they got back to me after a couple of days. I again gave the guy my contact information and requested that he fix the problem.
According to his reply, while they had, in fact, updated my paypal address, they hadn’t updated my log-in or contact information as the company was still using the old email address. I replied, more clearly articulating my need for them to update my log-in and contact information as the old email address would become invalid when my old Internet account officially closed at midnight, October 2, year of our Holy Lord and Saviour, 2009.
The tech support guy responded, saying that the only way to fully update this information was for me to fill-out another application with the company and go through the whole process again. Mind you, the initial application process took a motherfucking month and involved me writing an article for them on spec plus revisions that I wasn’t actually paid for. I wrote back to them that this was crazy, that I didn’t understand how they were able to update my paypal account, but not my contact/login info. That I thought their system needed a big upgrade because it was crap and that I wasn’t about to write another free article for them and I expected that I would be paid what was already due me as a result of recent work.
So, this morning I received another email from a different tech representative assuring me that if I filled-out another application it would be quickly processed and I wouldn’t have to write a free article and I would be paid, etc, etc. With this information in mind, I went to their website and filled-out the online application for a second time. When I hit the submit button, however, I received an error message to the effect that the form couldn’t be submitted because the paypal email was already on file. Fuck me! All I wanted to do was change my login email! That’s it! A simple task made unbelieveably difficult by a most unfriendly system and by tech support that is inadequate to say the least.
Another email later, I’m still waiting . . . and I am fuming.
