Alex Smart Wrote:
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> Hello Joanne,
>
> I share your feelings exactly!!!

I'm glad to hear that. I spent a good part of this afternoon -- moments of my life I can never have back -- talking to various robots. I had one company where a human answers and was helpful, and she got someone else to help as well. I was actually treated like a person, and it felt strange...It's becoming rare!

I was thinking maybe these phone systems are all part of an alien plot. They take away our will to form questions and offer us choices deceiving us into thinking their offered choices are all that is. *shudders*


> The thing I find most unsettling is when you get
> to the end of the frustratingly long and totally
> exasperating telephone menu and find yourself
> wondering whether you are talking to a machine or
> a person who has had a prefrontal lobotomy!

Yes, they are more robotic than the robots. They don't comprehend, or they push buttons and switch you to the wrong person. I've noticed that many of these alleged actual persons cannot speak on their own. They read from scripts. Even a very simple improv question can stump them.


> I mean, the people staffing these customer service
> lines seem incapable of reason, and have no
> initiative what-so-ever.

I had to explain that I received a package with no packing slip. I wanted to return it, but had no invoice to put with it and didn't have an address where I could send it. It took two phone calls, lasting nearly an hour. I was told over and over that I had to include the non-existent packing slip with the return. The last time I told one woman I didn't have it, and she said for about the fourth time, "What is it you're trying to do?" I slammed the phone down on her, but then I had to call back and go thru the ****ing menu again... !!!!

> As for their ingratiating, artificially cheery:
> "Good morning. My name is... How may I help
> you..." routine, I could (and on one occasion did)
> scream!

We have irritatingly cheerful robots who keep saying "OK, I think you said..." and then they misquote you! I began chanting, "human being, human being" and finally it said, "OK, I think you want to talk to an attendant." Aliens are among us...


> I've made complaints to two companies about their
> appalling telephone system, but all to no avail.

It took over 6 minutes to get through another menu, and all the while, I was forced to listen to commercials for things I don't want. I complained and was told my suggestions could be "forwarded"...they probably in the trash right now.


> You ask: "Why are companies doing this to their
> customers?"
>
> Well, in a word: cost-cutting

We should rebel. We need to start "Earth resistance" or something.