Mars Opposed to Ascendant

Oh blimey, I thought, when I saw this, knowing I was playing doubles tennis and then a word game I'd never played before with two people I didn't know that well.

Sailed through both of those activities - deliberately keeping my mouth shut a bit at the word game - and even sharing a book of tickets for tastes at local restaurants with a friend was, er, a piece of cake; no arguments, no 'I'd rather go here', 'I don't want to do that', no disagreements over samplings that took two tickets, both in perfect agreement that we didn't want to taste the mesquite tortilla with agave nectar at the museum -  lovely lovely morning and early afternoon. No fights with cashier in supermarket, no fist-shaking from motorists on the way home.

Loverly jubberly, life is good. Astrology is a wonderful tool, giving you awareness of influences at work in your life and enabling you to maneuver your way through the trickiest of circumstances if you stay conscious, not that there were any tricky circumstances to maneuver around. Hey, them planets can't be right all the time.

Hah! When will I learn? Never, obviously. Home to a message on the machine from the wonderful man-in-his-nineties in New York who I worked with years ago on an esoteric book he has had on sale on Amazon for four years. He has had a sale and can't understand the email. Could I call? And silly dopey gormless clueless fools rush in where you-know-the-rest picks up the phone and calls back.

Seller account? He doesn't have a seller account.

Well you must have, I say, or you wouldn't have anything for sale on Amazon. And knowing the answer before the question even formulates in my head, off I go - do you know your password?

Password? He doesn't have a password.

Well you must have, I say, or you wouldn't have been able to set up the seller account you think you don't have. I don't say the last five words out loud. What do you usually use for a password?

He doesn't have a password. Never had a password. For anything. Nobody ever asked him for a password. Password? Password? What am I talking about?

OK. Click on the Seller Account link and try to log in, I say, and there'll be something telling you what to do if you've forgotten your password that you've never had, I say, omitting the last four words and thinking I will never go to heaven.

Seller Account link? What Seller Account link? THAT Seller Account link, the one in the email they sent you. Which email? The one you're calling me about.

Best to draw a veil over the next ten minutes as we have several long-distance attempts for me to talk him through resetting the password he never had. Reading about the possibility of the password reset email going to his junk folder, which of course he has also never had, sends him over the top and, angry at himself for not being able to complete the transaction, guilty for taking up my time and humiliated at being what he calls so stupid, he is ready to forget the whole thing and not fulfill the order - the first order he has had in four years.

Much as I would also like to forget the whole thing I have a deep and enduring affection for this man I worked with so closely and have watched age over the past decade and say I will attempt to contact Amazon Customer Service and see if they can help.

I google ACS and get a phone number. I call. I tell them my name and then tell them it's not for me it's for - brief precis of the above. Let me put you through to Seller Support, they say. I get put through to Seller Support and explain I'm calling for an elderly man 2,500 miles away, brief precis #2, and I would like to get the shipping address for the sale he has just had. Yes I have his email address, yes I have his billing address, yes I have the order number.

Do I have the last four digits of the credit card he registered with Amazon when he set up the account? Er, now that you mention it, no. Let me call him back and get back to you. Do you have a direct number so I don't have to repeat all of this? Again, me being so psychic and all I know the answer to this before I ask it, and call A back to get the last four digits of his credit card number.

He gives me - after a suitable pause/hunt for credit card etc. - four digits. I call ACS back and ask for Seller Support. Naturally before I  get SS I have to give the seller's email and billing address etc. etc. No problem, now I have Seller Support, repeat my speech, give the last four numbers of the credit card - nope. No luck. Not the right four numbers. How about the last four numbers of his bank account? That would do.

OK. Back to the Bronx, given last four numbers of bank account after much discussion about routing numbers, account numbers, check numbers, weird little symbols that look like question marks etc., repeat the phone call, no luck, wrong numbers.

Decide cannot give up now and ask A to read me ALL numbers along the bottom of a check. Funny little thing that looked like a question mark turns out to a "7". First number he gave me is incorrect. Call ACS and get Seller Support and bingo! Checking account number correct. Thank God. Please may I have the ship to address for the order.

Well no, we can't give you that, but we can send a link so Seller can reset his password. Say first three people I talked to in Seller Support were ready to give me ship to address if I could provide all information requested. No no no, not our policy but we can send link for resetting password.

Back to the Bronx. Have you checked your email? No. OK, go and see - lo and behold! A 'reset your password" email. Twenty minutes by the clock and the password, which of course never existed in the first place, is reset, except that once we are finally - only 90 minutes from the beginning of my call back - in his Seller Account, according to him, nowhere in the email does it tell him the Ship To address for the order.

Reader, I no longer remember too much more. I know he found a Contact Buyer button. I know I told him to click on it. I know he asked me what to say. I know I told him to say "Thank you for your order. Please send me the shipping address." I know he asked me if he should say anything else and I know I said no. I know I told him to hit the Send button. I know he told me he got an Error message saying "Please Choose a Subject." I know I spent a lot of time explaining what a subject was. I know I spent a lot of time pointing out that if *it* said "Please Choose a Subject" there was a little triangle somewhere that would give him a CHOICE OF SUBJECTS. I know my voice had been getting progressively louder for the 120 minutes I had been on the phone. I know I told him I was expecting a phone call and would have to hang up but that I would call back tomorrow and we would sort it out. I know that if my horoscope tells me I can expect stiff opposition it will come to me one way or another, even if not quite the way astrodienst explains it will.