Didja ever notice that the people at those overseas “customer service” centers are trained to be both perfectly polite and perfectly unhelpful? (channeling Andy Rooney)

I gave Circuit City another chance, and they blew it again (after extracting more unearned money from me).

Previously on “Circuit City Sucks”: I made an online payment on the 14th, in plenty of time to be credited by the due date, and found they’re charging an “expedited payment fee” for payments which will be on time, but “only” several days before the due date. See rant from March 15th.

Somehow, that online payment didn’t go through, and of course I didn’t find out about it until I balanced the checkbook more than a week later. I immediately made another online payment, previous amount plus late fee, but then called them to find out what happened to the other one. I know I made the payment, because I can see the check number entry when my browser brings up an auto-complete box.

Naturally, they denied all knowledge of this earlier payment. I was reeeeeally nice anyway, and asked if they could see from their records that I’d been a good customer and always paid on time; they said yes. I asked if they would forgive one late fee, given the circumstances, but the guy (without even faking an apologetic tone) said they go strictly by the book. Against my better judgment, I even asked if they would forgive the fee if I opened the account back up: Nope. Still being reeeeally nice, I said that I regretted that they did not value me as a customer, and that this whole episode was leaving me with a very bad feeling about the whole company. You can guess his response: “Is there anything else I can help you with?“

Well, at least I have succeeded in warning over 350 people to date about the “expedited payment fee”, according to the views counter on my post at clarkhoward.com. And my spleen is a little bit vented. But the frustrating thing is, I am quite sure Circuit City does not give a crap about customer complaints, because there are