Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Qwest for L

A picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes a thousand words are worth a picture. Here's a woeful tale from Kristin, who understands my mission:

I took a photo of this whole thing that I forgot to bring to work, so I'll send it over later, but I wanted to share this story with you because it's so ridiculous. Qwest online has this new "privacy" feature wherein they send you a code through the mail and you have to enter the code once you receive it into the website. Well, I got my code and I tried putting it in. It didn't work. I retyped it, still nothing. So, I skipped through the message (you had a really long period of time to skip the message) since I figured my code was broken and that I'd get around to calling Qwest when it was necessary. Well last night at midnight I realized I had to pay my phone bill and suddenly I could not skip through the message. I pulled out my mailed code and typed it in. Nothing. I noticed that I could have them call me with the code so I did and the phone rang a couple minutes later. Here's basically what the code looked like:

6331l52D230

The font was serifed (similar to courier new) so it looked like D was the only letter (plus the D was in caps). Well, as the automatted phone message informed me, the second one was actually a LOWERCASE L. Because of the serifed font the only difference was the tip of the top serif was a somewhat (not very much) higher than on the one, but otherwise they were identical. Now, the code wasn't case sensitive so I have NO IDEA why they felt the need to include a lowercase L next to a one and in the same code as an uppercase D. Needless to say I am MIFFED and I am planning on sending Qwest a message about this whole thing.

Anyway, as soon as I realized what the issue was I thought of this blog, and that you might share my pain with this whole situation.

Cheers,
Kristin

I'd suggest calling Qwest, but the blue curlycue in the Qwest logo resembles a cursive lowercase L, so they probably wouldn't be able to help.

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