Phone rage

[mdlbear]

There are excellent reasons why I prefer not to transact business by phone when I can possibly avoid it. Clearly, I am one of those people who should not even be permitted near a telephone, let alone call someone he doesn't know and attempt to get anything done.

Phones frustrate and infuriate me; voice-response menus frustrate and infuriate me even more. And if I reach voice mail rather than a human I'm better off hanging up, writing out a message in complete sentences, and going through the entire sorry process again to read it to the blasted machine rather than venting my rage on the spot.

Let's not even mention the fact that missed calls show up on my cell phone minutes or even hours before the corresponding message shows up in my voice mail. Let's not think about the fact that a phone has the worst user interface ever devised by a half-witted excuse for an engineer.

Note to companies: You want my business? Have a human standing by to answer your damned phone if your web page doesn't give me the information I need. And, I can assure you, it probably doesn't.

Note to self: insurance companies don't want to talk to customers. Only your own personal agent is equipped to talk to you. If he's out of town, you're hosed, so plan ahead.

Comments

[hvideo.livejournal.com]

You can try hitting some keys that DON'T correspond to the endless menu choices. Sometimes that will get you transferred to a human.

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

Whenever I get a voice activated menu, I very patiently and calmly repeat the phrase "I would like to speak to a human being." to it over and over again until it gives up in confusion and transfers me to an attendant.

It usually only takes 2-3 attempts.

[mdlbear]

0 will often do it. The most recent case actually got me to humans rather quickly; they were just the wrong humans, and once I did get a direct line to a human it kept getting his voice mail.

[mdlbear]

That would probably work. I usually use "operator", which also works fairly often.

[autographedcat.livejournal.com]

I think it's just the imp of the perverse that makes me insist on speaking to it in complete grammatical sentences. :)

[mdlbear]

I tend towards angry incoherence when I'm flustered or annoyed, and if I've had to resort to a phone call it's guaranteed that I'm already annoyed.

[chatworthy.livejournal.com]

One thing I do to keep my phone rage down is this: When the phone rings with an inbound call and I pick up and say hello, the caller has two seconds to have a human say hello back to me or I'll hang up.

Say, as long as we're on the subject: Do you know a good Linux voice menu system? Something I can put on an older machine. Thanks.

[mdlbear]

Inbound calls are a lot easier to handle and, yes, the delay before a human answers is a good indicator. After that, if I wasn't expecting the call, I'll almost invariably ask them to send me paper. The absolute rule is that I don't transact business over the phone unless I originated the call.

You want asterisk. There's an active user community around it, and there are Debian and Ubuntu packages for it. Makes a great answering machine even if you don't use any of the PBX features. (Which reminds me -- I have to get it set back up...)

[chatworthy.livejournal.com]

Asterisk. Thanks.