The Secret of PIN

Have you called your cable company recently? Your cell phone provider? Companies now seem to be requiring pin numbers to access accounts. Your ssn that they MADE you give when you signed up? Nope, that's not your pin. You would THINK that would be a secure number to use for identification, but nope, apparently not safe enough. The new pin number that you've been assigned is safe. SO SAFE in fact that NO ONE TELLS YOU WHAT IT IS.

"To access your account, you'll need to give me your 10 digit pin number ma'am."

My what? I don't remember giving you a pin number.

"Well, no, we assigned it to your account ma'am. Now can you please tell me the pin number?"

Wait, YOU assigned it? So how am I supposed to know what it is?

"If you don't know your pin ma'am, you'll need to go to our local retail location and show identification to gain access."

WTH?
So, this new pin number that companies are requiring (but not sharing with you) is a 6 to 10 digit number. How am I supposed to remember a bunch of different pin numbers? Well, once I accept the challenge to go on the quest to discover what my pin number is, I do have the ability to change said pin. Great, so I am probably going to do what everone else will, I am going to change them all to the same thing so I can remember them all and avoid a ten minute account verification including security questions and answers that I never set up to begin with.

"Please verify your fathers middle name." Okay, it's Neal. "No, that's incorrect." NO IT ISN'T!! And how do YOU know anyway??I am furious. I have a problem with my cable that I can't get anyone to talk to me about. I have a question on my cell pone bill that no one will answer. I just don't understand it. But once I DO find unlock the key to these secret numbers, I'll call Sprint and expect them to solve a problem but won't actually tell them what the problem is. See how that makes them feel.