Captive Audience

For six and a half years I’ve been fighting with a particular utility company over many issues.  I have to admit that, for the most part, the quality of their product is good.  It has more to do with everything else about them.  We don’t have an option to change to a competitor as there is none.  We are a 100% captive audience.  Every neighbor and family member I have ever spoken to about them is in agreement – if we had an option, any option, we would go with a different company.  Because we are a captive audience and we need them and they know it, they can treat their customers in any way they find fitting.  

Billing has always been an issue.  I have lost my witness with them on the phone. I have said things like, “I am going to scream.”  I have been put on hold for endless amounts of time, often in never-never land where they simply push a button and let me sit and never return.  If it sounds like I’m paranoid, I have lots of witnesses in the community that would confirm my testimony.

Whenever we would make a change to the plan, within 12 hours our service would get knocked out and we would have to call their tech department and get it hooked back up.  After about three years of such incidents, I got confirmation from one of their call center people that that was indeed the way they designed it.  Mind you, they would not tell you this information. You simply had to muddle through why doesn’t it work, and then in frustration call the tech department.  Here I thought I was just paranoid.  I figured they were trying to deter us from making changes as a punishment.  

I have grown greatly in my walk with the Lord as I looked at one past bill and I had listed things to meditate over while I waited on hold.  You know, make good use of the “down” time so I would not just get mad.  Every six months we would have to call and reissue our discounts.  This sounds reasonable enough, I guess, but after calling every six months, then for the next three months the bill would be wrong. I’m not exaggerating.  So every month when I got their bill in the mail, I would raise it up to the Lord and pray for strength to open it.  Sometimes I gave up and opted to just pay whatever it was, it was not worth losing my peace over.  

Last week it was our six months to call to maintain our discounts.  Yes, I do have better things to do.  Yes, I have complained as everyone else I know has, too.  They have a monopoly on the market and we get what we get.  I prayed before and during my call.  The lady started telling me about a new plan.  No!  I will not get anything else from you, I just want my discount and then I will fight for the next three months to save it.  She kept talking telling me how her company has been listening to customer complaints and they are going to change things and I should believe her.  Six and half years of the opposite and I knew she’d heard it before because she even gave me complaints from other customers that I did not even voice.  She said it will be better, cheaper and easier.  And I said as someone who has been abused for a long time, “What’s in it for you?”  She said the company has been listening.  As I got off the phone, having agreed cautiously to have the tech come out in a few days to install an updated component, I said to my husband, “Either they have found Jesus or the FCC is after them.”

The tech came out in a few days to install the new component. I said, “You know we always haven’t been very happy with your company.”  His response was dead on, “Like I haven’t heard that before.”  And then it hit me: the poor guy.  We can’t go look someone in the face as their call centers are all over the country, but when this real live human being is in front of us in our house he must take a lot of grief for “the rest of them.”

That morning I was praying to God knowing the tech was coming.  We had an 8 hour window of time to expect him.  I did not want to be consumed by how long we would have to wait, what could go wrong, etc.  I was praying and in my spirit I felt that I should ask the tech if he had any pain in his body.  Well, okay, that changed the dialog in my mind.  So instead of him coming and me rehearsing all the company’s faults I decided to pray for him (assuming of course it was a him) and be ready to ask if he had any pain and if I could lay hands on him and pray for him.

He arrived and installed the component and we were educated on it. Then I told him, this has nothing to do with the install but, “Do you have pain anywhere in your body?”  He said, “Well, yeah my back hurts”, and he told us what he had done to it.  I asked him to reach out his hands and I simply said, “In Jesus’ name, pain you must leave this man’s back.”  He said he still felt the pain but he was hopeful. As am I.

Now only God could write a story like that.  Wouldn’t it be like Him to grow me up for six and a half years as I learned to act loving in obedience, top it off with a healing for an employee in the very same company I had such disdain for?

I may pen this stuff but I don’t write it!