After receiving a small moving violation fine I opted to pay the price of the ticket vs. head to court and deal with the inconvenience of going downtown and disputing with a judge. Thinking this... More

After receiving a small moving violation fine I opted to pay the price of the ticket vs. head to court and deal with the inconvenience of going downtown and disputing with a judge. Thinking this might just be more quick than the latter option, I was in for a surprise. After calling to speak with one of the customer service representatives and waiting several minutes on hold, after a brief hell-o and request for assistance with my account, I was immediately hung up on. I then waited on hold several minutes to reach someone again who acknowledged they had just talked with me, apologized for hanging up, then realizing the implication and the rudeness of their action, then denied it was previously them on the line (yes, in the same phone conversation). A few seconds into this call, I received the response from the customer service rep. that they could not help me and that I had to speak with another rep. (in the same position) that was out of the office. Having to squeeze in my request for information again before they unwillingly tried to speed up the end of my call by transferring my to someone else's vm, I managed to finally get an accurate balance from this rep...but not willingly nor with any pleasantness at all. After waiting a week and a half for the lady with the vm to get back to me (who never did) I had to call back to go through this whole process again. Less hanging up this time, but just as much unwillingness to help or provide any information I requested that all the c.s. reps should have easily been able to access through their shared computer server. The last straw: not trusting these reps over the phone, I finally went to pay the bill in person and the c.s. rep that I encountered almost started an argument (she was very confrontational) after I simply asked her if the cashier accepted cash. She assumed that I was paying cash at that moment (though I had never made that statement), entered it into the computer as a cash transaction, and when I pulled out a money order to cover the majority of the amt. plus maybe 2-3 dollars to cover the remainder (since I hadn't been sure what the total amount was) she asked in a tone of ridicule 'what are we doing here?' This to which I responded and as most would assume one would not even have to say anything: 'paying the ticket.' Though the transaction was pretty simple...the fact that she could respond so rudely over an action that is her job and that only requires she have the ability to count and see what is placed before her just emphasized the pretty gosh darn bad and incompetent service you might just get from people that our tax dollars are paying over $16 or $17 dollars an hour (not including their benefits) to serve us like this. This c.s. rep continued to blame me for not telling her how I would pay when she could've just asked (like her job would require....or at least deduce from her having some reasonable mathematic ability) and went on to have an attitude through the remainder of the transacion. All this long rattle in short, if you get any ticket...if you don't dispute, pay it ONLINE right away and don't dare to deal with these rude customer service reps at the Seattle Municipal Court Building. There are maybe one or two nice reps, but the odds that you will get a negative one are much greater...unfortunately. Just to note: I never approached any of these reps with a rude tone or statement...but simply had to keep asking to get basic information that should have been supplied with ease or suffer through an action that should have been completed without any form of struggle or pain. At this point I am very disappointed as well in the HR dept. responsible for the City of Seattle's hiring needs with the Municipal Court and any suprevisor that allows people like that to take advantage of funds we should be paying out for GOOD customer sevice. :) The End.
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