Get Rich Slick

I just had the most mind blowing experience with Bluebird American Express.   I have finally spoken to the world’s dumbest customer service rep in the world!   A few weeks ago, I decided to do a sweep of my Bluebird account and have the funds send directly to me.   Since there is a fee for taking money out using an ATM and since there is usually so low dollar limit like $300 or so, I usually opt to take $1000 or more at a time by writing myself a check through BillPay.

Well it’s been two weeks and the bill has yet to arrive so I called up to find out where the check is and the agent was quite literally the world’s most stupid person.   She insisted the check would have gone out and been received within 1 to 2 business days and I kept telling her that was not humanly possible because the address was a residential address and not a business much less an electronic funds transfer.   The agent could not conceptually understand these basic components of banking and how money moves from point A to point B.     I even tried to walk her through how if a check or any piece of paper is mailed out of New York to say Arizona or New Mexico, it cannot possibly get there in one day or two using the regular mail system.   If you’re using FedEx or overnight service, of course, but not if you’re using the USPS without paying some hefty fees which I doubt Amex does to send a check out.

I ended up wasting 20 minutes with her on the phone and was no better off than I was when I started the conversation.  I’m going to wait a few more days to see if the check arrives but if it doesn’t I’ll need to put a stop payment on it and I’m dreading how long that will take with these brain dead agents on the phone.

I was excited when this service first got started primarily as a way to transfer funds to my kids accounts but I’m probably going to end up closing all my accounts after I clean up this mess.  I just can’t trust my money with a bunch of idiots.  This is very surprising given it’s Amex but it is a product targeted for the “Walmart” shopper and not higher income individuals so maybe I should have avoided it altogether the way I avoid Walmart.   I feel sorry for the poor people that use this service and may have difficulty with English because the rep was so stupid that anyone with even a small problem with English would have no way of communicating with the rep!

I’m in the market for a new car and I’m open to all options.  I really would like a luxury car so I’ve been checking out Audi’s, Lexus, BMW’s, and Cadillacs but I saw an ad for an Equus made by Hyundai and I thought I’d do a test drive.   What lured me there was the promise of a 10 year warranty for the vehicle and as most readers know, I have a tendency of buying vehicles new and driving them for 10 years before I sell them and move on to something else.

Before I went on a test drive however, I googled “Hyundai 10 Year Warranty” to see what the internets have to say about Hyundai and I run across this financial website with a post entitled, “America’s Worst Warranty – Why I Will Never Buy Another Hyundai” and proceed to read it and the 200 or so comments posted on the site.   There is also this site dedicated to complaints about Hyundai as well.

Needless to say, I wasn’t impressed one bit with Hyundai after reading all the complaints but I show up to the dealership anyway to do the test drive.   The car actually drove fairly well and I was really impressed with the leather interior so supple and soft I thought they must have skinned babies and used their skin  to make the seats in the car.   I ask them about the blog posting and the 200 or so complaints and the various other sites I found on the internets.   The kids at the dealership don’t really know what to say which said more to me than anything else.

I say “kids” because not a single one of them seemed to be over the age of 25 and the one thing about “Millenials” and younger generations is that they hold no loyalty to the Corporate Hegemony of the world.    If these sales people and manager had been in their 40’s or 50s or older, they would have spun themselves as hard as they could to get the “right message out” and that’s what I loved about my interaction with these kids.

In any event, I told them that I probably wouldn’t be buying the $62k Equus marked down to 50k special for me and they understood my reasons:  too many bad reviews on the internet = no sale.   Ironically, they all understood how the ratings systems worked on Yelp and Amazon and agreed with me that if something has anything less than 3 or 4 stars on a 5 star scale it’s not worth wasting money on and they agreed.

As for the other dealerships (Audi & Lexus), well I’m dealing with old timers there so I’ll need to bring my best game to the match.