You Say Po-Tay-To, I Say Po-Tah-To. You Say Mumbai, I Say Bombay.

I changed my phone service last month in an effort to decrease our monthly bills. I removed long distance service and voice mail. By my calculation this should save me approximately $15 a month. I've had this decreased service since the beginning of September, so I was a little annoyed when I received my (paperless - just doing my part for the environment) bill and I was still being billed for my old services.

I called Verizon and did battle with the bodiless voice that insists she can help me even after repeated requests to speak to an actual person. She even sound mildly miffed when she repeated that she's perfectly capable of handling my request.

I should have stuck with computer girl. She probably was more qualified to help me than the actual person with the bad attitude and negative intelligence quotient.

As soon as I got to the part where I explained I had made changes to my service online, she immediately interrupted me mid-sentence saying "You need Online Services. CLICK (transfer, cue Muzak)"

The slightly more pleasant girl at Online Services told me I needed the Billing Office. When I explained that the Billing Office had transferred me to her she apologized and explained that they have no control over billing issues and that she would have to transfer me back.

And why was I not surprised when I reached the Billing Office yet again to hear that, No. I really needed to talk to Online Services.

In an effort to avoid being the human ping-pong ball for the day I insisted that SHE talk to the Online Services Department while I waited. When she returned she told me that it was taken care of, but somehow I just didn't feel reassured, so I asked her to go ahead and transfer me back to Online Service just so I could verify.

At which point I got to talk to Sandeep. Sandeep was a very nice guy. And I'm sure that if I were required to answer incoming phone calls from India, I could never speak Hindi with the same proficiency that he spoke English. But the fact remains it was very difficult for me to understand his heavily accented English.

I needn't have worried. He didn't appear to understand my English at all. In contrast to the customer service reps in the local office he was completely charming and utterly accommodating. He told me that I was absolutely speaking to the right person. He would be happy to fix whatever was wrong with my Internet Service (even though I needed help with my phone service). He said I had a beautiful name. He even went on to compliment my laugh.

I'm pretty sure we set a date to get married in there somewhere too.

I don't think he ever actually understood what my problem was, but he gave me a credit of $20 on my next bill for no reason whatsoever other than he couldn't understand what it was I did want.

Does that make me a mail-order bride?