Remember the old Groucho Marx show ? If you do you are dating yourself for sure! For those of you who don't remember it was a game show called, You Bet your Life", hosted by Groucho Mars back in the late 40's. Groucho would have guests come on and answer questions to win money. Part of the show included a SECRET WORD, (pronounced WOID). At the beginning of the show a duck, (not a real one), would be lowered down for the audience to see, and in its beak was a card showing the secret word for that day. When the contestants came out on stage the duck was removed and the audience listened carefully to see if in the course of the show a contestant would unwittingly say the secret word. If they did bells and whistles sounded and confetti fell from above. The reward was $100 which was a huge amount at that time. It didn't happen often but we viewers were always on the edge of our seats in anticipation.
This is all brought to mind because of yesterdays frustrating and curse word filled interaction with the Florida SunPass web site. As usual the encounter was initiated by The Man.
Several weeks ago The Man was notified by email that his Sun Pass account would be terminated at the end of February unless he up dated his credit card information. Previous to this email The Man had been notified by his credit card company that his card was about to expire so they were sending him a new one. This is a HUGE issue because it involves the United States Postal Service, which we are coming to realize is is dire need of a major overhaul. (Mail goes missing on a regular basis around here and letters sent from my address to my grand kids who live a mile away either never arrive or take two months to make the trip.)
Upon getting the SunPass notification The Man contacted his credit card company who assured him, "the card was in the mail". Two weeks later no card had yet arrived and SunPass was about to expire. (This is not a huge issue right now because The Man goes no where but when we make our trek back to MI in a couple of months we will need the pass working. Because The Man's home address is Michigan the new credit card was supposedly sent to the Michigan address where it should have been forwarded to Florida. (At least that is what would have happened in a perfect world.). A month later and the card STILL has not gotten here. Soooooooo, The Man places a second call to his credit card company and they issue him another card, same number, new expiration date but it will be sent to the Florida address. Two weeks later THAT card has not yet arrived. BUT . . . the credit card company has given the man the new expiration date and security code so he can now go on the SunPass web site, open his account and update his information. SIMPLE . . . NOT !!!!
And so we arrive at yesterday morning"s debacle. Because we are A MAN we can not handle any of this computer web site stuff on our own so The Man comes to me and asks me to assist him in updating his information. Being an idiot, I agree. In we go to Computer Central and I attempt to log onto his SunPass account. At first it actually worked and I foolishly though how easy this was going to be. HA !!!! In their infinite wisdom Sun Pass has upgraded their system from a four digit "Pin" number to a password. And of course the password must meet certain requirements . . . "No less than 8 characters, including capital and small letters, a number AND a special symbol, as in hashtag, exclamation point or question mark." But before you can do all this you have to put in your old password . . . except we don't HAVE an old password . . . all we have is a PIN number. By now there are many curse words flying and I am about hit The Man over the head with the damn computer. FINALLY . . . I think I have gotten the job done and we can log in to his account only to find that because I was working on MY computer I have now changed MY password and we still can't get into his account NOR can we now access my account because it is not recognizing ANY of the twelve million passwords we have just been trying to get the account to accept.
I have NO idea if I even still HAVE an account with SunPass, no less how to log into it !
And still we have not gotten to the point of getting The Man's information updated so he can use the SunPass when we travel. That was the point we started at this morning when I gave The Man a phone number to call SunPass and try to straighten out this account thing. I foolishly thought he would call, get his password straightened out and then add his new credit card number. SILLY ME !! He did make the call but simply put a different credit card number on his account. This was all done via automated help. Why he did not do this a month ago when the whole credit card issue first reared it's ugly head I have no idea. What I DO know is that in a year from now when this credit card expires I will NOT offer to help him change any information.
As for my SunPass account . . . who the hell knows ? Maybe if I say the secret woid I'll win a million dollars.
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