Employee INCOMPETENCE

We're trying desperately to consolidate all of our bills from Cingular into one national plan. Our contact with cingular tells us that before a few accounts can be moved to the plan, we need to take care of their outstanding balances.

So I ask which accounts, and could I please have the corresponding bills. She replies that no, I can't because I'm not authorized to discuss the plan, despite the fact I'm cc'd on every email regarding this procedure. Oh but my boss is. Oh but he no longer works here. Ok, so I'll have to ask the IT guy in our Pittsburgh office to ask this contact which accounts and copies of bills please.

Except he's on the same email conference. He tells her to please remove my boss and authorize me instead. She says no because she's already put through two such requests this month, (our CIO was one of them). I was dumbfounded. (edit: I should point out that I'm the only guy that pays our phone bills) Never seen such obstructionism.

Again with cingular, we typoed a p.o. box and a check got sent to the wrong cingular location. That place couldn't actually find the accounts we had listed to be paid for that check, so they applied it to the current balance on a few of our other accounts. We didn't find out about this until cingular sent us disconnection notices for those accounts we thought we paid. After tracking the check down, I ask the guy to please refund us the money because we'd doube-paid those accounts. He said no because it would pay for our next months bills. Nevermind the accounting problems it causes us because we've got two checks now on our books that went somewhere completely differently. Unimaginative cash apps people are frustrating too.

Jam it back in, in the dark.