Bad IT Systems; Stupid Customer Service

=: Late Fees And Charges Still Apply :=

My Aunt died in January. CitiBank billed her for February and March
for their monthly service charge on her credit card, and then added
late fees and interest on the monthly charge... the balance had been
$0.00 and now is $60.00.

I placed the following phone call to CitiBank:

Me: "I am calling to tell you that my aunt died in January."

CitiBank: "The account was never closed and the late fees and charges
still apply."

Me: "Maybe, you should turn it over to collections ..."

CitiBank: "Since it is two months past due, it already has been."

Me: "So, what will they do when they find out she is dead?"

CitiBank: "Either report her account to the frauds division, or
report her to the credit bureau... maybe both!"

Me: "Do you think God will be mad at her?"

CitiBank:" ... excuse me....?"

Me: "Did you just get what I was telling you... the part about her
being dead?"

CitiBank: "Sir, you'll have to speak to my supervisor!"

(Supervisor gets on the phone)

Me: ''I'm calling to tell you, my Aunt died in January."

CitiBank: "The account was never closed and the late fees and charges
still apply."

Me: "You mean you want to collect from her estate?"

CitiBank: "[stammer] Are you her lawyer?"

Me: "No, I'm her great nephew." (Lawyer info given... )

CitiBank: "Could you fax us a certificate of death?"

Me: "Sure." [Fax number is given]

(After they get the fax.)

CitiBank: "Our system just isn't set up to deal with a death."

Me: "Oh..."

CitiBank: "I don't know what more I can do to help..."

Me: "Well... if you figure it out, great! If not, you could just keep
billing her ... I suppose ... don't really think she will care ...."

CitiBank: "Well... the late fees and charges do still apply."

Me: "'Would you like her new billing address?"

CitiBank: "That might help."

Me: "Odessa Memorial Cemetery, Hwy 129 [plot number given]."

CitiBank: "Sir, that's a cemetery!"

Me: "What do you do with dead people on your planet?!!"

-- Lifted from a mailing list email

Looks like CitiBank needs a new CTO. As for the customer service reps, what were they thinking? How can they let an IT system (and a bad one at that) constrain their actions? If they can't deal with unusual situations like this, then they are not adding value on top of the system, and the company is better off firing these guys and let customers talk directly to the computer.

Technology should support our work, not the other way round.

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Facebook Friends Search

Today I was doing some research on Facebook as part of my work, when I hit upon an interesting feature. Actually it's just the friends search function. The interesting part comes from Facebook trying to show you people you are more likely to know, and it does that by looking at the number of mutual friends between the two of you. What's really cool is Facebook will show you these mutual friends.

Still, why is it interesting? Because it lets you discover connections you never thought existed. Most of time the mutual friends are from the same "group", for example my primary school friends, so it is not surprising they are all friends with that person. Occassionally, I find a person knows two of my friends but from different groups. As far as I know these two friends aren't related to each other, but they know the same person!

I wonder if this feature can be used for some kind of datamining application, such as finding out if two of your friends from different groups knows each other. I am sure more malicious applications exists. It is also remarkable that I can find these connections given I have only added about 60 friends. Imagine what you can come up with if you have hit the friends cap of 5000?