America 101: Customer Service

I spent two hours and fifteen minutes on the phone with Customer Service. I daresay living in America is 50% dealing with customer service.

Soooo annoying.

Airline charged card for flight, but does not supply confirmation number. Bank says can not drop pending transaction unless Airline supplies merchant authorization code. Airline does not have merchant authorization code because charge did not go through on their end, and wants Bank approval code. Bank does not have an approval code because charge is still pending.

After calling each one back and forth, I finally got them to talk to each other on three-way. They must have a secret customer service people language, because finally some kind of code that showed up on both ends can now be used to send an authorization to drop off the charge. Airline started working on it, kept checking in with me every 5 minutes for 50 minutes and telling me to stay on hold... then my phone died.

My head hurts. That's all I can say.