As a peace-loving, mellow sort of person, I’m rarely truly angry. Annoyed, grumpy, indifferent, yes, but angry, not likely. But today I’m furious.
ETS. The Educational Testing Service. If it were a person, we might come to blows. Impenetrable webs of bureaucracy, bitchy customer service reps, misleading websites, and money-grubbing monopolies would be a source of annoyance any day, but when they come between me and grad school, I’m neither patiently forgiving nor temperate in my anger. It was like this: in late October I sent out the additional score reports for my general and subject tests. I hadn’t received the subject test scores yet, but I figured that my order would be filled when those scores became available. Why would I make such an unreasonable assumption? Well, only because a statement on the instruction page of the online score-ordering website said:
“score reports for a future scheduled test date will be mailed when scores for that test date are available”
Now, it’s possible that my grasp of the English language is slipping, but to me this statement suggested that it was indeed the established practice to send pre-ordered scores once said scores were processed and became available. However, the customer service rep informed me (snottily and with unnecessary attitude) that it “clearly states” on the website that only available scores may be ordered. I could hear her derisive sneer as she shot down my belief that pre-ordering scores was an acceptable practice. She refused to listen to my concern that the order acknowledgement I had received by email had listed my erroneously-ordered subject test score reports along side my properly-ordered general test score reports. I felt like screaming or crying or cussing her out, but because I’m a well-mannered Minnesota girl and because she had made me feel thoroughly stupid and incompetent, I thanked her, hoped she had a good day, and hung up.
The real kicker is that I then proceeded to give twenty-three more of my hard-earned dollars to this pernicious company, in order to rectify my mistake caused by their misleading website. If any other company operated in such a way I would take my business elsewhere, but I can’t exactly do that now, can I? Luckily this mistake only affected one of my eight schools–it could have been disastrous. I can’t do anything about it…but I want to. Oh, I want to.
PocketGarden 