You spin me right 'round...

Acquiring a used spinning wheel should not bring Teh Dramaz.

Yet it did. Only me...

First off, I must praise infinitely the WONDERFUL ladies at Woodland Woolworks - they are wonderful, their customer service is top-job, and I recommend you give them their business. They were mentioned a couple of times on Ravelry spinning groups, and I'm glad I found them. I fully intend to be a repeat customer.

What happened to me? Oh, I ordered the Ashford Book of Spinning, another Ashford book and Howard's Feed & Wax to learn more about my wheel and give it the proper care it needs.

Somehow, in addition to the one charge that went through, there were four pending charges showing on my bank's online account info. That was tying up nearly $180 of my money, which freaked me out because we had just made car and house payment, and things were tight this month.

I called Woolworks and asked about it; I figured either a) they'd had issues with their credit card software processing the charge, or b) there'd been a hiccup somewhere between their bank and mine. They researched and called me back to say they only saw one attempted debit - the successful one - and no other signs of trying to charge my card.

So I call the bank. Let me say right now that I dislike dealing with Washington Mutual's customer "service". Why? Because I know they're outsourced to the Philippines. Before you jump down my throat and call me "racist", let me point out - they are not AMERICAN. They do not understand American idioms. They may speak English, but their comprehension is not always adequate, due to it being a different culture. (I won't go into their annoying paraphrasing and quoting of scripting.) Even at my most fluent in Spanish or Japanese, I know I would never have been able to hold a conversation of real importance.

The first rep I got was useless. I snapped and started yelling at her - did I mention I work customer service? and I hate being yelled at? - because these charges to my credit card can't be disputed till they actually post. Either that, or I had to get the approval codes for the charges that did not exist anywhere because they didn't happen. I used up my morning break at work dealing with her. "Are you kidding me? LOOK at my account. Why on earth would I, on the same day, make five charges for the exact same amount. Do you know what I bought? Books. And wax. For a spinning wheel. How much wax do you think I need?" I came back into my building like an enraged bull; nostrils flaring, eyes flashing angrily. I told my supervisor what happened, she said "next time, ask for a supervisor." Yeah, but I hate doing that, because I hate it when people do it with me.

Called back at lunch and got another guy, who said *I* needed to institute a three-way call with the merchant. Excuse me? I only have a half-hour lunch, and between 10 minutes of scarfing down my food, and five minutes of navigating their impossible phone menus, I did not have time to try again. I demanded a supervisor. "Amy" gave me the lather-rinse-repeat. Again, I started lambasting her. "Are you kidding me? You know, I work in a call center, too. I'm actually on my lunch right now, sitting out in my car so I can have some privacy while doing my banking. You know this thing called 'schedule adherence?' Well I happen to pride myself on staying at a Level 1. I'm a top rep on my team, and when *I* am faced with a difficult issue like the one I'm posing to you, *I* take the initiative and make the call and get things resolved. Why the hell can't you call?"

I was told to have the merchant call in. Given the number to pass along, insisted they notate (and I made them read it to me) that I gave permission to the merchant to call and resolve the issue. Called Woolworks back and told them that my bank was being utterly stupid, and they are insisting that these mystery charge codes still exist, and "can I trouble you to call them? I made them notate that it was okay for you to call to resolve this issue." She said she would, and promised to leave a voicemail on my cell.

Checked my voicemail on my break; the supervisor at Woolworks apologized and said she spent no less than 15 minutes trying to get through to a human on WaMu's phone system before giving up. I believed it.

After work, when I should have been working overtime, I instead spent half an hour dealing with WaMu. Called again, got a rep, said "please read my notes; I need a supervisor because I am done with this nonsense." Got a supervisor who again said I need to conference in the merchant.

I almost roared. "Oh, no you don't. I know for a fact that banks can call out; I work in a call center, too! I get bank reps calling in all the time with billing issues. You will CALL them. NOW!" Gave them the number and they called.

Very nice people at Woolworks. They attempted to help; WaMu supervisor did the whole blustering of needing approval codes. Nice lady at Woolworks said they had gone through all their pending charges over the last three days to look for my charges and could not find any but the one, and gave him the one code she had for approval - that was the charge that went through correctly. She asked the supervisor flat out "You're going to fix this for her, right? and get her money back to her?" Supervisor then states out of nowhere that "sometimes" this happens (though usually it's just a duplicate charge, not quintupled) and that it will fall off because the authorization for the charge expired that night at midnight.

... and nobody thought to tell me that before? I made some snarky comment to him, apologized profusely to the lady at Woolworks for "the incompetence of my bank", and the call wrapped up.

Sure 'nough, the next day, those pending charges had evaporated. But I'm done with WaMu... we're switching banks.