I was at the hardware store one recent Saturday morning, scanning replacement drainpipe in the self-service checkout. I tapped my credit card to pay and the terminal beeped.

That was odd. I reached for my debit card, paid and carried the drainpipe out to the truck. Sitting in the parking lot, I dialed the number on the back of the credit card, trying to recall whether anything like this had happened before. Years ago, our card was suspended after someone attempted to use it in Sri Lanka. Or perhaps I had grabbed the wrong card from my wallet; we'd been issued a new card number not long ago, and maybe I'd kept the old one in circulation by mistake.

But that theory didn't hold up. I had used the card at the dentist's office on Monday without any trouble.

Either way, it needed sorting out. I worked my way through an automated phone maze, pressing options, repeating "agent," and listening to hold music until finally a recorded voice picked up.

The first thing I heard was an announcement that this call was "an effort to collect a debt." That got my attention.

Eventually a human being named Darien came on the line and I began explaining the situation. I felt reasonably confident. We've had this credit card since 1994. In all that time we've never carried a balance and never missed a payment. We're probably not the company's favorite customers--we pay the card off every month--but use it constantly. Groceries, gas, everyday expenses. The company gets a one- to three-percent cut off every transaction.

Part of my urgency was that Karen was planning to go to Kroger that morning. I didn't want her to have the humiliation of a declined card at the checkout.

So I explained all of this to Darien and asked if he could see our payment history and tell me what the problem might be.

"You are delinquent," Darien shouted. "You cannot use the card when you are DELINQUENT." Then he began explaining what the word delinquent meant.

I told him I understood the word (which I also understood he was using as code for "deadbeat") and asked which bill hadn't been paid.

"Your February bill is DELINQUENT," he said.

By this point I had started making notes. The timeline didn't add up. It was only March 6, and our credit card statement usually arrives around the eighth day of each month. Just the day before, Karen had mentioned that my dental visit had posted to the new statement, the one we hadn't even received yet. She keeps a close watch on the account, which was another reason I felt fairly sure of my ground.

"Not March 6," Darien corrected me, his tone growing more aggressive. "March 3. You must pay $91. You are DELINQUENT."

Ninety-one dollars didn't make any sense. My dental visit alone had cost more than twice that amount. For a moment I wondered if I had somehow landed in the middle of a scam call, but then I remembered I had dialed the number printed on the back of the card. This was an actual customer service representative raising his voice at me over the phone.

I asked Darien to connect me with his supervisor. I asked again and again. Seven times in all. More than once he assured me the supervisor would simply repeat what he was telling me: I was DELINQUENT, I had to pay, and the card would remain frozen until I did. Our long and allegedly honorable history with the company didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was that I was DELINQUENT.

Finally he put me on hold.

After another interval of hold music, a supervisor came on the line. It took us less than two minutes to figure out what had happened. The credit card company had not received our January payment for $334.28. Once the account went past due, the card was automatically suspended on March 3.

I paid the bill over the phone with my debit card. The supervisor lifted the restriction and apologized that we had not received any notice--no text, no email, no phone call--letting us know the payment had gone missing.

She also credited back the $30 late fee that had been applied and asked if I wanted to file a complaint against Darien.

Yes, I said. I also mentioned that I write a newspaper column and might end up telling this story because, in addition to being DELINQUENT, that is what I do.

I've calmed down since then. I'm not withdrawing the complaint, but don't especially want Darien to lose his job. (I do want him to come to my house and shout DELINQUENT in my face one more time.) I imagine he spends his days dealing with a steady stream of genuine delinquents, and that can wear a person down. I feel sorry for people whose working lives are spent fielding complaints from put-out strangers over the phone.

Still, the episode reminded me of something sports columnist and broadcaster Tony Kornheiser talks about frequently on his podcast.

Kornheiser has developed a running lament about the quiet collapse of customer service in America. Every week or two he tells stories of a package that never arrives, a phone call that disappears into an automated maze, a business that seems oddly indifferent to keeping a loyal customer. Recently he said three checks he mailed in January never reached their destinations. They vanished somewhere inside the modern postal system.

The systems still work, more or less. Packages move. Credit cards process payments. The mail arrives three or four days a week.

But when something goes wrong, the machinery seems to lose interest in the person on the other side of the counter. Darien wasn't really arguing with me. He was defending the algorithm.

In the database, I was delinquent. Once the computer had made that decision, the rest of the conversation hardly mattered.

Meanwhile, I am still waiting for several tax documents to arrive in the mail. If they are not here by next week, I will call and ask for the forms to be sent electronically. That is what most people do now. It is faster, more efficient, and far less likely to disappear somewhere between the mailbox and the kitchen table.

Still, I prefer the old-fashioned way. I like having the paper copies, something tangible to file away.

There was a time when systems like this were built around relationships. A bank knew its customers. A clerk might look at your account and assume a mistake had been made. A problem was something to be solved, not a condition to be announced in capital letters.

Now the process runs in the opposite direction. The computer makes the decision.

The voice on the phone explains it to you. And if the database says you are delinquent, you're delinquent.

pmartin@adgnewsroom.com

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