Can you hear me now?
Hello my lovelies,
What a week! In the last seven days I've been approached by two potential buyers for my house (I was planning to list it in late February or early March), conducted informal showings (I'm still in the middle of the purge/packing, so it's nowhere near ready to actually "show") received two contracts, hired a fabulous realtor (Love you Jodi) accepted an above asking-price contract and began identifying new potential places to live. Additionally, I FINALLY got death certificates, so I've started the final phase of closing out this chapter of my life.
Yesterday, I started my day by opening the estate account and depositing the estate checks that I've received. While I was at the bank I was also able to confirm that I am, in fact, a signatory on all of his bank accounts, so full account ownership has now been transferred to me. YAY!!!!! Such a relief to have that done! I also called the credit card companies and got all of his accounts paid and closed. The last step with the credit cards is complete paperwork and open a new card to have all of his airline miles (he has a little over 400K miles, so it's TOTALLY worth the hassle) transferred to me. Next week, I'm finalizing the life insurance paperwork and meeting with my financial planner to figure out the best way to manage the pension and 401K transfer. In short, it's been an AWESOME week!
I don't want you to think I've gone all soft here and I'm going to only start writing cheery coffees about how fabulous things are. I know I've lamented to a number of you about my frustration that I was unable to change our Verizon plan without a death certificate because the plan was in Ray's name. Lucky for all of you I got an opportunity to do that yesterday...
After a fabulous lunch at a brewery with some girlfriends, I decided that since I had a few ounces of liquid courage via Zwei Brewing, all the necessary paperwork and Ray's old phone this was the day to visit the Verizon store. WTF! Walking into a Verizon store on a sunny, Friday afternoon absolutely confirms for me that there is indeed a HELL! I was greeted by a very aloof, young woman with waist-length black hair. Apparently this hair is very, very, very heavy, because she kept flipping it from one side of her head to the other. She asked, in a mostly nonchalant tone, how she could help me and by some miracle of the universe, between dramatic hair flips, she was able to type Ray's phone number in. The astute little thing then looked quizzically at me with her head cocked and the entire mass of hair spilling onto the counter on her right and said "Um, but you're not Ray, right." As I'm standing there with a death certificate and TWO cell phones visibly in hand, I calmly (READ oozing with righteous indignation) repeated, very slowly, that I am here to change our account because Ray died. With a puzzled look, she indicated that someone would be with me in a moment.
I waited, then I walked around the store mindlessly looking at crap that I really could not care any less about. OK, mostly I was eavesdropping on the idiotic conversations that occur in a place like this and watching Ms. Hair-thang and her meathead counterpart flirt and take selfies. (GAH! Seriously, f*ing selfies are going to be the downfall of our society. I HATE selfies!) About 15-20 minutes later Rapunzel returns to let me know that Mylee will be with me soon. When Mylee finally bebops over I wasn't sure if I should swat the giant caterpillars crawling on her eyelids, or let her know that those ridiculously long fake eyelashes really only belong on a drag-queen and she is NOT cute enough (nor anatomically built properly) to pull off dressing in drag! Instead I said that my husband passed away and I needed to update the Verizon account and I wanted to see if I could return his phone. Confused, she says, "Oh, you don't need a new phone?" to which I replied with just a head-shake and probably an eyeroll. Frankly, I was too focused on the furry critters on her face to actually form sentences. The poor little thing really didn't have a clue what she was supposed to do or say, nor did she have any inkling about the level of sarcasm coursing through my veins when she blurted out "Oh my, we've never had this happen before." At this point I remembered how to form words (and a very irritated look) and I replied in a somewhat (HA!) snarky tone "Really?" That was VERY nice of me, because what I wanted to say was "Are you f*ing kidding me. No Verizon customer has ever died? That should really be your new marketing slogan "buy a Verizon phone and you will never die!" Fortunately for all of us, the bugs on her face have not yet consumed all eight of her remaining brain cells, so she decided she should probably pass me on to someone a little more qualified.
She steps away and to my left I see her whispering to a stocky dude with a man bun, then she takes the boxes of phones and cases from his arms and he begins walking toward me. Man-bun boy was very helpful and after a couple of attempts successfully (I hope!) processed the return on Ray's phone. He then informed me that this return means that I have to once again visit the Verizon store about a month from now to change the billing. I appreciate the honesty in letting me know that if I change the account before that return/credit actually processes in the Verizon system that I will have a billing nightmare for the rest of my life.
While I was waiting for him to enter all of the information and process the return I was afforded an opportunity to observe the hairy-eyeballed-wonderkid attempt to upsell a very frustrated mother and self-absorbed teenage daughter on the Verizon HUM device. (SIDEBAR - Just watching this mother/daughter exchange makes me pity every parent that has to endure the purchase of a cell phone and the multitude of accessories she "cannot live without" for a teenager. (One such accessory was a black Michael Kors phone case, embossed with a very small MK costing $99! WTF!) That is a hell I am delighted I do NOT have to endure!) The upsell technique started by talking about a "friend" who gets his car stolen at least once every year. WTF! Seriously, anyone who car gets stolen EVERY YEAR needs to be eliminated from the genepool NOT used as an upsell technique. Seeing the disbelief on the mother's face she quickly shifted her sales pitch to the daughter informing her know that she can use the HUM to remember where she parked. OMG! Really? We need a f*ing device in our car for this. Have we seriously become so stupid as a people that we are completely unable to remember the most mundane of things like where we parked our f*ing car without using our cellphones to remind us? I understand that the technology could be very useful in certain circumstance, but if you need this all the time then I am fairly certain you are far too stupid to actually DRIVE and for the love of all things holy do NOT PROCREATE!
End of story, right? HA! At this point Manbunnicans informs me that I already have a $750 credit on my account. Huh? Why would that be? I asked if that could be applied to my payments. Sadly, based on the plan we currently have it's a device credit only. That money and the additional credit from Ray's phone can only be used toward the purchase of new devices. UGH! I know the idea of new devices had Ray (and probably many of you reading this) thrilled out of his mind, but it's so not my thing. Hmmmmm, if only I could figure out a way to apply that $750 to the purchase of shoes.......
Until next time....
XOXO
PS - Here's a little bonus material about the crazy family......
Ray's mom's phone is also on my plan. For some odd reason she was informed that this phone only costs me $10 per month, so Joyce said she will mail me a check (She's not actually SEEING anyone these days, but more about that fun in a future coffee. FMYLIFE!) for $120 to cover it for the year. That's all fine and good, except it's not actually accurate. I know who told her that amount, but I'm not exactly sure where the $10 figure came from. I guess that is just proof that it's not only the Trump administration that is working with alternate facts! Oh well, I'll just pick up the rest of the cost because that's easier than questioning the arbitrary number.
