On Hold

I'm on my second credit card call to notify my card companies that I'll be traveling a helluva lot soon, and man, it's inconceivable. How many times do I have to repeat a 16-digit number? Slash, how long can Citi keep me on the phone, processing each trip notification separately? I've talked to three people on this call alone. The first call was better: one guy, under ten minutes, no holding. Poor call quality, though.

Here's my schedule:

July 29-August 4: the Philippines
August 4-August 25: South Korea (every time I call, they all act surprised that I'm here, yet every time I call, I say I'm living here and they say they'll make a note of it)
August 25-29: Taiwan
August 30-31: South Korea (for major packing and gear-getting-together)
August 31 (traveling back in time over time zones): Hawaii
September 1: Maine (well, and the rest of New England, too, but I didn't bother to mention it)
September 20 (for one year): England

Jezum.

On this last call, this guy kept telling me he could set up notifications for up to 60 days in the system, yet that the system wouldn't let him set up notifications into September, and he wouldn't acknowledge the fact that these two bits of info were incongruous, despite the two or three times I pointed that out (I didn't use "incongruous," though. Yeah, right.).

After finishing all my calls, I noted a change from previous notifications. Customer service agents used to be very ooh la la about international travel and make all sorts of conversation about all the places I've gone. Now they're all pretty blase about it. Maybe too many people complained about getting talked up in the name of customer relations. I'm cool with it.