Locked for processing
I initiated a banking transaction this morning, and have been checking its status all day to see whether it had completed. According to the relevant account balances, the transaction has completed, but for the past few hours its status has been showing as "locked for processing." Which doesn't sound like it's completed.
So I called customer service for my bank. Unfortunately, all day whenever I've tried calling them, when I press the relevant button in their phone tree, I get a single ring followed by a busy signal. The first few times, I figured it was one of them there "higher than usual call volumes," but by the fifth or sixth try, I decided their phone tree was broken. An impression bolstered by getting the same ring-then-busy when I tried various other phone-tree options.
I eventually pressed the number to indicate that I wanted a loan, and sat on hold for ten minutes, occasionally being automatically shunted into other parts of the phone system and pressing more numbers more or less at random.
Finally, I got to talk to a real live human being, who told me that the department that handles my kind of transaction closed half an hour ago. I thought maybe she might happen to know the answer to my question, so I asked her anyway. She told me that it sounded like the transaction had gone through, and that the status being left at "locked for processing" for hours was perfectly normal.
But it was pretty clear from her phrasing and tone that she hadn't the slightest idea; she was just trying to mollify the customer.
On the one hand, I admit to finding it a bit reassuring to be told that everything's all right, even if it's clear that the person who's telling me has less of an idea than I do about what's going on. On the other hand, I wish customer-service people were trained to say, "I'm sorry, sir, but I don't know the answer to that" when they don't. Or even, "It sounds okay, but I'm afraid I'm not entirely sure." But I imagine that too many customers would push them to give a definite answer in that case. Hell, I've probably done that kind of pushing myself.
Anyway, I also told her the phone tree was broken, but I suspect she didn't believe me. And I told her which number I'd dialed to get to the broken phone tree; she told me I should be using a slightly different number. Just as an experiment, after getting off the phone with her I tried the other number she'd recommended, and this time I got a busy signal immediately instead of the top level of the phone tree.
I should probably devote some time some day to learning how to interact better with customer service people; it would probably make me and them a lot happier. I'm slowly getting better about not being belligerent with them, but I still haven't gotten the hang of getting them on my side. Which is odd, because I'm good at doing that in other situations. Something about talking on the telephone with someone whose job it is to process my square-peg problem with a round-hole solution seems to shut down my ally-making capabilities. They're ill-equipped to answer any question that doesn't strictly conform to the question types they've been trained to answer; but if I've got a standard question, I use an automated system, where available. Most of the time if I'm looking to talk with a human it's because my problem doesn't fit the standard form.