Hoops galore!

For the past couple weeks I’ve been trying to set up a “sustaining membership” to the classical-music radio-station in Rochester I listen to.
The station is WXXI-FM.
WXXI is a public-radio station. It’s mainly funded by its listeners.
What I’ve done in the past, since I listen to it constantly, is let them bill me for an annual membership.
With a sustaining membership I’ve pledged that annual amount broken into 12 monthly payments. WXXI can charge my account for the monthly amount.
But I don’t like that. I don’t trust it. I’d rather authorize the payments myself. That way, if anyone makes a mistake, it’s me.
I know someone whose automatic bill-pay went bonkers and overdrew her account.
So a torrent of e-mails were exchanged with WXXI regarding whether I could initiate the payments instead of them.
They said I could, so I put payments to WXXI into my smartphone calendar the end of each month.
So, finagle my bank to do a payment; it was August 29th.
First my bank wanted WXXI listed as a payee.
I started doing that.
“Business, individual, charity, or other?”
I clicked charity, unaware of the hairball it would initiate.
“For security purposes, what was the maiden-name of your maternal grandmother?”
I misread that, and entered the maiden-name of my paternal grandmother.
Boink! “Naughty-naughty! You failed. Please try again.”
“.......grandmother again......”
I entered the my paternal grandmother’s full name.
Again, boink! “Naughty-naughty!”
“What was the name of your first pet?”
I misread that, and entered the name of my current pet.
Boink! “You failed three security challenges, so we locked the account. Please call our Security Department to unlock the account.”
Great! So far I’ve wasted 20 minutes, and I don’t have all day. Now I gotta call my bank to unlock my account.
“Please hold during the silence. We value your call, so please hold and your call will be answered in the order it was received. BOOM-CHICKA-BOOM-CHICKA-BOOM-CHICKA-BOOM......”
They unlocked my account, so I started over.
But I clicked “Business” instead of “Charity.” “Business” doesn’t prompt the security-challenges.
So WXXI gets their monthly sustaining-membership payments as if they were bill-pays, like the phone-company or gas & electric.
The bank also wanted an address, phone-number, and account-number.
Was WXXI in the phone-book? No. Was the information on their website? No.
I ended up calling WXXI. All the information was same as on my membership-card, including my membership number, which serves as an account-number.
But I wouldn’t know that; 15 minutes chewed up.
Altogether just setting up this sustaining-membership with my bank took almost two hours.
It wasn’t WXXI’s fault, or even my bank. I blame the technical gurus who wanna pad their resumé. I get this all the time.
Internet procedures supposed to save time, that have me jumping through hoops galore.
I hope to do a blog about my recent adventures with Amazon.com.