Let me tell you a tale of woe concerning paying a cable bill:

I almost always pay the cable bill on the phone. Naturally, when I realized the cable bill needed to be paid today, I picked up my phone and my bill and my debit card and dialed the appropriate phone number. It rang and was answered by a computer, but it was a new computer and not the system they have always had in the past. This one was a voice recognition system. “Cool” I thought … “The old system always sucked anyway.”

It recognized my phone number and magically associated it with the correct account and asked what I wanted to do, so I told it “pay by debit card”. It understood me and asked how much I wanted to pay, so I said “current balance”. It recognized that, repeated the current balance back to me for verification, and asked me to type or speak my debit card number.

The first time through I typed in the number, not quite trusting this voice recognition program. I mean, it is Time Warner, and they do tend to screw the simple things up. It repeated my number back to me, asked for the expiration date, and told me to say if I wanted it to proceed processing the payment. “Yes!”

What followed was a period of strange little computer sounds –like the Enterprise bridge– apparently to let me know the computer was working. A couple of times the pleasant non-human voice informed me it was still processing my payment, followed by more little “computer working” sounds. Then it said it was having technical difficulty processing my payment and a human representative would pick up the phone to continue my payment. After some clicking and popping, another computer voice informed me the next available representative would be with me shortly and the current hold time was four minutes.

Fifteen minutes later, a human male answers the phone. I tell him I am trying to make a debit card payment on my cable bill. He says he can do it, but it will cost an extra $5.75. Would I rather do it through their IVR system for free? “Is that the same system I just went through that was having technical difficulties,” I ask? “I don’t know,” He replies. “Well, let me try the IVR system. Maybe it’s not the same one I just tried.”

I wait a few minutes and the same voice I encountered earlier asks me what I want to do. I go through all the questions and information gathering again. Yet again, it gets to the point of processing the payment and has technical difficulty. It says it will send me to the service department to speak to a human representative. I hang up and call back.

I try the IVR system one more time, and the same technical difficulty occurs. Since I am going grocery shopping anyway, and the HEB takes cable bill payments, I might as well go through the hassle of paying it there. I grab my bill, my grocery list, my cell phone, and my wallet, and I head to the store.

The grocery store is a madhouse, but I stand in line at the service desk for 20 minutes. The line is moving quickly, and at least I’m indoors where it’s air conditioned. I get to the front of the line and finally am standing in front of an HEB employee. Sure, he’d love to help me pay my cable bill, but he needs the account number. He puts his finger over the account number on my bill while saying this. I thought he was just being a silly smart ass, and I push his finger away from my account number and tell him my account number is right there. “No,” he says “I need a 21 digit account number. You’ll have to call Time Warner to get it.” The only place I have ever seen a 21 digit number associated with my cable account was the online bill payment page, and I am certain hundreds of people pay their cable bills at HEB every week with only their cable bills.

I squint my eyes at him and leave the service desk. By now, due to the clutch pushing and angry walking, my toe is freaking killing me. I have no desire at all to spend an hour walking around the grocery store in pain buying groceries … and I still want to pay my cable bill. I grab the bare necessities off my list: milk, butter, cookie making supplies, and Q-Tips and luckily walk right up to a free cashier.

By now, my toe is throbbing, and I am fully aware of the fact I probably shouldn’t have driven anywhere today. I move the seat up further so I can press the clutch with the middle of my foot instead of the ball. It’s awkward, and my knee keeps hitting the dashboard. Somehow, I get home.

So now I am in pain, pissed off, I didn’t get my groceries, and my cable bill is still not paid. Oh … and my toe is on fire.

First I call HEB and ask them questions as though I were completely clueless. “Do you take Time Warner payments?” “Yes, you’ll need your cable bill.” “Just my cable bill?” “Yes, just your cable bill. It has your account number on it.” I thank her for her time and decide that in addition to Time Warner getting a grumpy email, so will HEB.

I call Time Warner one more time, just in case the computer decides it is through having technical difficulties. It isn’t. As I hang up, I wonder how many other people are experiencing this technical difficulty, and what a monetary boon it must be for Time Warner to get an extra $5.75 per person who hasn’t been able to pay their cable bill on the telephone.

Well, I am not going back to HEB to pay the bill, the automated telephone system is non-functioning, and I am not paying an extra $5.75 just to have a human run my debit card for me on the phone. I go to the Time Warner PayXpress site, put in my information, and receive an email saying they are processing my debit card payment. That was 40+ minutes ago, and it still hasn’t gone through the bank yet.

So technically, two hours after I started on this adventure, my cable bill still isn’t paid. I have no idea if it will get paid, but now I have to wait to see what the online system does, because like hell do I want to pay it twice. We’ve been through that before when Lin and I both paid the bill on the same day, and it was hell getting Time Warner to admit they’d received more money than needed and getting them to apply the extra to our account (i.e. not expect us to pay again the next month). I never want to have to deal with that situation again.

I’m going to stop hovering on the bank web site and the PayXpress web site for today. Instead, I am going to go thaw some pork chops for dinner and bake some cookies. It better be sorted out by morning, or Time Warner won’t be getting a grumpy email, they will be getting a grumpy phone call (or maybe even a visit to their main office, since I want to tell them to drop Cinemax and the HD package from my account). They do not want me calling them to complain, and they certainly don’t want me going to the main office to gripe, so it better sort itself out by morning for Time Warner’s sake.

But HEB is definitely going to get a grumpy email, as well as me having something to say to my friends who work in management there, about the fact that all one needs to pay a cable bill at their service desk is a freaking cable bill and not some magical 21 digit account number that appears nowhere on said cable bill. If there hadn’t been an extremely long line of people waiting in line to do whatever they needed to do at the service desk, I’d have given the guy grief right then and there, but I figured I’d be nice and let more people be angered by his stupidity (and I wanted to get the hell off my foot ASAP).

So that’s been my afternoon. Hope yours has been going better. Most likely has been, unless you’ve been trying to pay a Time Warner cable bill.

And no, there isn’t anything wrong with my debit card that would make the system reject it for some reason. I used the thing at HEB to pay for the groceries with no problem at all. I use it every week at least once a week, and I have been paying my cable bill on the phone with it for years. Time Warner’s new system is non-functioning, and it feels like a money-making gimmick, what with the $5.75 extra you have to pay to have a person do it when the system has “technical difficulties”. I have no doubt had I agreed to having my pockets picked of some extra cash by Time Warner’s “helpful” representative, the payment would have gone through in a matter of minutes.