Where is the "service" in customer service?

So in the last week, I've had three interactions with customer service for some very large companies - Microsoft, Symantec and Bank of America.

I've already written a rant about my unfortunate experience with Symantec that resulted in my removing their Norton anti-virus product from my laptop.

So ... what I want to know is, where does it say in the customer service manuals that it's the latest and greatest thing to blame the customer for the problems they are having?

Now I've got Bank of America claiming I am responsible because the bank decided to authorize a $145 charge on my debit card that it claims I did not have funds to cover.

I look at my online statement, and it says I had plenty of funds to cover the payment I made over the phone to Comcast, having just made a deposit and all.

But no, the customer service dept. tells, me. They AUTHORIZED the charge at a time right before my deposit posted to my account. (I would also note that they used to credit you with at least part of a deposit at the time you make it, but they don't seem to do that anymore.)

Authorization, it seems, equals $125 in fees on my account because authorizing the charge meant that the last five places where I had charged something put me in overdraft - and only by about $30 at that, I might add.

The fact that the actual charge from Comcast doesn't show up until AFTER the deposit in the online account activity means nothing because they AUTHORIZED it before the deposit posted.

"I don't see any red numbers there," I say to the woman.

"That doesn't mean anything," she replies, "because we authorized it before the deposit posted."

She keeps saying that, over and over.

Well ... since I was blissfully unaware of the $125 deduction in my balance, I continued on as if it were still there, resulting in an additional $210 overdraft fees that could have been easily avoided.

I ask her why the hell the bank authorized anything that I did not have the funds to cover (although I still maintain that I did have the funds). And mind you, I'm going to the ATM this whole time, and the receipts never indicate that I have a negative balance ...

"We authorized the Comcast payment as a courtesy to you," the customer service woman informs me primly.

Yeah, right ... a courtesy off which they made $125. And a week later, they made $35 off the "courtesy" of allowing a $5.39 charge at Dunkin' Donuts ... and on and on it went until I went online to pay my propane bill and discovered that I had $335 less in my account than I thought.

The same day I'm talking to the customer service persons, I get in the (snail) mail a notification from Bank of America that this is all going down.

So I demand to speak to a supervisor, who continues the tack of telling me that it's all my fault ... How is it my fault that the bank authorized Comcast to take $145 if they truly thought I did not have it, or for that matter, the $5.35 at Dunkin' Donuts? She says she understands what I'm saying, but ... Ultimately, she puts back into my account the original fees totalling $125.

She refuses to put back the rest, even though she has already admitted that it was a "snowball" effect from the original fees.

She says restoring the $125 not an admission that the bank did anything wrong, it's another "courtesy."

"That's all I can do," she says. I tell her I'm not hanging up the phone until she puts all of it back.

Once she realizes I am really not going anywhere, she gives me a mailing address that I can write to, to perhaps "resolve" this issue. Of course, it's not an email address; why would it be?

I liked it better when things were not all electronic because back then, banks could not run scams like this. I admit that I have in the past been somewhat careless with keeping track of my actual bank balance, but these days I am very careful.

Not authorizing the Comcast payment I could have dealt with - I would have paid the bill online, like I usually do. I just happened to be on the phone, negotiating my new digital package (which gives me less services for $10 more, I might add) and told the guy while I had him on the phone, I'd pay my bill, if there were no fees involved in doing that. Ha ha on me.

So beware of "courtesies," because I'm pretty sure that a courtesy is not supposed to pad the coffers of the entity extending it.