I'm trying to do the conscientious thing and pay my credit card. Now that I'm working, I'm good like that. As I go to pay off my main card, I find out that the credit card company has been bought by another credit card company. For like the third time over the past couple of years I might add. I, of course, didn't know this because whenever I get mail in my mail box from a credit card company that doesn't look like a bill, I instantly throw it away.

How I found out about all of this is because I went to the old company's web site to pay my bill but got re-directed to another web site. I go to that Web site and find out that I have to register again in order to access my account. I do not want to register again only because I don't like the idea of having to give my credit card digits to yet another site. Considering my credit card apparently is being passed around like that girl Nikki from first floor who made her way through my dorm floor freshman year, I don't feel like it's my responsibility to enter that information again.

No problem, I'll just call the customer service number and do it over the phone. So I call the number on the back of my card and get told to call a new number. The voice on the other end of the phone? Not your typical voice mail voice, but your typical southern accent, all of which made it sound like one of the Admin's at the previous company left the message on the voice mail as everyone was cleaning out the offices during moving day. Call the new number. Another voice, the real kind of voice mail voice, tells me that they're receiving too many calls at this particular moment and so I should call back. Considering how cheap the web site looked, the voice on the original voice mail message, and this message, I am not impressed with this new company.

I call a few more times and finally get through and prompted to press "1" for English. Which I do. Nothing. The call is disconnected. Call again and the same thing happens, disconnected. Call again and again and again and keep on getting disconnected.

Ten minutes later, I finally get through and am told to give them my account number of ss# in order to access my account. I give them my credit card #. The voice mail voice on the other hand tells me they have no record of my information. Try my ss#. Same message. Try both numbers again and get the same response. Apparently, my new credit card company has absolutely no record of me. I press "0" in hopes I can get to a real person, but apparently, no real people actually work for them.

Okay, you want me to register online so I will. I go to the crappy-ass looking web site and once again enter my information. This time I'm told that I can't use my old account number, but have to use the account number for my new card. As in the new card I threw away because I thought it was junk mail, as would anyone else who gets a letter from some random credit card company they never heard of. The message says, however, that if there's a problem, I can call customer support and they'll help me. There is no number, however, given. So I click on the "customer support" link on the site and am taken to a page that just gives me an e-mail address.

Faced with no other options, I did what I had to do and sent them an e-mail. One that said in no specific terms what my problem is and that I needed their help to pay my off my credit card. Oh, and that if I was dead broke and hadn't eaten in months and was lost on some random island and the only way I could eat anything was to use their credit card, I still wouldn't. Because they fucking SUCK.

PS- in throwing the phone around my apartment in anger at the tenth or eleventh attempt to get past their voice mail system, I accidently tore a hole in my pants. Whoever the company is that now has my credit card, I hate you.