fun with credit card companies

so after listening to, 'if this is penny d, press 1,' repeated over and over on my voicemail all day, i finally decided to call chase credit card fraud department and find out what was going on. i called the number on my caller id and the mechanical voice on the other end asked for my six-digit verification number. i tried to explain to the robot that i did not have such a number and thus, could not give it to him (it was a male robot), but he kept asking for the number and when i wouldn't give it to him, he hung up on me. so then i had to look up the number on the website where i had the privilege of waiting to speak to a customer service agent who transferred me to the fraud department. there, i got to speak to a woman i could barely understand (and i'm pretty good with accents) and who took several minutes to find the verification questions she needed to prove i was who i said i was. i'm not exaggerating, several minutes. finally, she began asking me questions, most of which i had to ask her to repeat because i couldn't understand her and because she was asking about things like my address from a hundred and fifty years ago. the best part was when she said, 'yes, that's right' to my response regarding when i graduated. i know when i graduated! yay for me! finally, after several excruciating questions and answers, she was satisfied that i was, indeed, penny d black and could get to the real meat of the phone call. she needed to confirm that i had changed my address and phone number but she kept asking if i had received a change of address and then she changed to had i recently changed my address (why, yes, this morning, on-line, in fact). i hadn't wanted to change my phone number but the system wouldn't let me proceed until i changed it so i put in a 555 number. i thought about putting 867-5309 but someone probably has that number and i didn't want to cause even more problems. then she verified a recent purchase, changed my phone number back to what it should be, confirmed i had received my new card last month (that i still haven't activated), and thanked me for calling. so, so painful.

here's the kicker. the only reason i went on-line this morning to change my address with the credit card was because my netflix account is on hold due to my zip code with netflix not matching my zip code with the credit card. geesh!