Sunday, March 7, 2010

Equipment Change Proposal

I've had a bad day, and I'm in the foulest mood, and I've been fighting the moron invasion for the last hour.

The target of my rage: automated voice answering systems.

These have become the pinnacle of frustration to millions of Americans. Let me tell you about why they are the one of the most un-sat devices that mankind has ever devised -- because when customers such as myself are trying to call customer service for whatever, and the stupid electronic woman's voice that's supposed to soothe you but doesn't asks one of the thousands of possible arbitrary questions that have no relation to what you need, and at the moment she says "say 'I need assistance for pain'"" - at that moment is precisely when your child shouts out from the back seat and queers the whole process - "Proctology department, you got it." Now you're going to cycle into a department that you don't want, with another arbitrary list of options that have no bearing on what you're doing, and the only real option at this point is to hang up and try again. That can take an hour or more, and you can bet that the customer will be screaming by the time they get ahold of a representative.

Also, the loathsome Gollum looking creatures that design these automated systems have figured out that pissed off customers like me will just hit "0" over and over again until we get a real person on the hook, and they've made it so you can't do that anymore.

I'll tell you right now, calling customer service and finding out that it's one of these unhelpful machines is a good way to get me to spend my money at your competitor. And to the geniuses who thought to write their customer service number with letters - you do know that these days, most phones have QWERTY keypads that don't have multiple letters assigned to numbers, right? I mean, you'd have to be pretty clueless to miss that. You have no idea how frustrating it is for a guy who is just trying to get some service, and can't because some goon thought they'd be clever by writing out the name of their company in their phone number. Try figuring that out while heading down the interstate.

I just went through this with GNC, and by the time I finally got ahold of a flesh and blood person I was beside myself with anger. Reggie was good to go though, and got my problem solved quickly. Who would've thought a human could fix something better than an electronic bimbo with a nice voice?

Fix it!!

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