Why am I not surprised?

This post was written on Thursday, February 28, 2008 while I was in the office, right after I put down the call with the third CSO.

I applied for a credit card at the start of this year. On Jan 15, I received a letter to call the Fraud Ops department to verify my details. After talking to them, I was told I would receive a letter from the bank to let me know if my application was approved.

In early Feb, I began wondering why I hadn’t received a reply. Even if the application was not approved, I should have already received a letter. Receiving a rejection letter was extremely important especially since I was about to move in a couple of weeks’ time then. I didn’t want my letter to go missing.

After I moved, I called the bank to inform them about the change in address for my other credit card and also to check on the status of my new card application.

The customer service officer (“CSO”) told me that she could not find any records of the application in her system. She said the only application she saw was the one dated January 2007 (A year ago!) I told her that’s the wrong one she was looking at. She looked again and then finally found out that a letter had already been sent to request for me to verify my address. That was on Feb 10.

Today, I called the bank to check again since I did not receive the said letter. Another CSO I spoke to said the application is still pending and she was unable to give me any information on why it was still so. She told me that an application typically takes 30 days to process. But if there is any other issue, it may take slightly longer. She was, however, not sure how much longer it will take. She suggested for me to call back in a week’s time to check again. Well aware that even if I were to call back in a week’s time, I would still get the same answer, I asked if there was any way she could help me escalate the matter to someone who would be able to tell me why the application was still pending. She said even if I were to speak to other representatives, they would still give me the same answer. There was no other way to go about doing it, just call back in a week’s time to check.

I then requested her to transfer me to the Fraud Ops since the department was the one which told me I should receive a reply from the bank. I talked to the CSO at Fraud Ops. After a few minutes of checking through her system, she told me that a letter was actually sent out on Jan 24th informing that my application was rejected.

So my questions are:

If the letter was sent out on Jan 24th, way before I moved out of the old apartment, why didn’t I receive the letter?

Is it the post office’s fault again? How long does it take for the post office to deliver a piece of letter?

Why did the first CSO tell me that a letter was sent to me to verify my address when I called her on Feb 10 if a rejection letter had already been sent out on Jan 24th?

Why didn’t I receive that verification letter the first CSO was talking about unless of course if it is the rejection letter I should be expecting?

I understand that the CSOs may not be privy to all customers’ information. But couldn’t the 2nd CSO have done more to help instead of keep telling me to call back? There must be a reason why the application was still pending after more than 30 days. If the first CSO was right, doesn’t that mean that she should be able to see in her system that the application was still pending because of the need to verify my address?

Why is it that the 3rd CSO was able to see in her system that the application had already been rejected but the 2nd CSO’s system showed it as pending? I understand that sometimes in a big organization, the right hand may not talk to the left and it takes time for information to travel from one end to another. But in this case, I was only checking the status of a credit card application. I'm sure the bank would have a centralized database for such information, so why is it that the three CSOs gave me contradicting information?

I was feeling a little pissed after I got off the phone with the last CSO and so complained to Tim. Tim then asked, “Are you surprised by all these?” I paused for a second and actually smiled to myself, “Seriously, no.” Why am I not surprised? This is just another typical day in the US.