Joanne Wrote:

> I like it, but some of the strategies won't work
> in this country.
>

The problem is that the UK tends to follow whatever happens in the US ... so I suppose the miseries that you're experiencing at the moment are going to be visited on us at some stage.


> We also don't have music on some lines; instead we
> get commercials for the company. I miss the
> music, as irritating as it can be. Too many
> commericials and I start screaming.

I have a pathological hatred of all commercials. The moment a TV programme stops for any reason, I put the mute on so at least I don't have to listen to the ghastly things. But they're invading public space more and more persistently: there are plans to install TV screens in various forms of UK public transport, such as railway carriages and taxis, and there won't be any way of turning them off. It's absolutely horrendous. The powers-that-be are supposed to be encouraging people to use public transport, but TV screens that you can't escape will just make a lot of people feel that they prefer to drive, so that at least they have control over their immediate environments.


As for
> keeping the alleged human who answers on the
> phone, I keep them on way longer than 3 minutes.
> I take at least that long to complain about the
> menu, the lack of humanity, etc., etc. And in the
> interest of killing time, I've thought of creating
> a few commericials about how wonderful I am and
> all my achievements that I can read to them, too,
> read very slowly...

What I do is put the phone on loudspeaker, turn the volume down so I can hear if a human operator comes on the line, and do something else while the burbling continues in the background.

In the days before telephones, of course, people would mostly have written letters if they wanted to complain. Then came switchboard operators, who would filter and direct calls; but then, I suppose, it became too expensive to have a zillion switchboard operators, and so the larger companies hit on the bright idea of using computer technology - cheaper than using human beings - to weed, sift, filter and direct telephone enquiries. It alienates a lot of people, but are there really any examples of large companies going out of business because of customers taking exception to the way their telephone calls were handled? As long as the volume of calls is there, they won't take any notice of a small percentage of dissatisfied customers.

You could go back to writing letters, of course ...