Out of date tbh - It’s never a labyrinthine phone tree anymore, it’s a “natural speech” based menu that can never help with more than the most basic inquiries like “how much is my bill?” and still stubbornly refuses to put you in the queue for a real person.
Sometimes cursing will get you connected to a human.
I’m my experience it’ll just hang up
It doesn’t even take swearing for some of them - I had one earlier this week that hung up on me when I tried pressing zero to see if that got me anywhere. Touchier than humans.
Comcast once hung up on me because the system wanted to transfer me to a department whose phone system hadn’t yet be set up in my region…the system force transfered me to a number that didn’t exist and I was immediately disconnected.
FedEx has one of the worst phone support systems. It goes out of its way to tell you you’re an idiot for wanting to speak to a human being because you can’t possibly need any more information than what it has already told you. Then it proceeds to just hang up on you.
Your call is very important to us.
refers you to website with every option
Image Transcription:
A four-panel comic called Inky Rickshaw by Ricky Hawkins (inkyrickshaw.com @inkyrickshaw). The first panel shows a man in a blue shirt, yellow tie and glasses, holding a mug with the text BOSS MUG on it. He’s talking to a woman seated at a desk with her back turned to the desk, wearing a white shirt and black skirt and looking up over her shoulder from her phone which she’s holding in her hand. On the desk is a blue desk phone, which is ringing. The man is saying “What’s that noise?”, to which the woman is replying “It’s the customer service line.” The second panel shows a close-up on the man, behind which is a purple background with a flowchart on it. The flowchart starts with a rectangle which splits into two options resulting in circle or triangle. The circle also has two options which both results in rectangles. The left rectangle has three options, the left of which results in a skull, the bottom option splits into two results, one of which is the triangle on the second tier, and the other is a question mark, and the top option results in the initial rectangle. The second rectangle from the circle has two options, the bottom results in a circle and the top results in another rectangle. The circle has two options, one results in a triangle but the other’s result is outside the panel, the triangle’s only option’s result is also outside the panel. The rectangle has only one option that also results in the triangle on the second tier. The man is saying “Are you saying someone actually navigated our labyrinthine phone tree…” The third panel also shows the close-up of the man, only this time he is leaning back slightly and has one eyebrow raised in consternation. On the green background behind him is a confusing line of sheet music that appears to be in an inconsistent meter. The man is saying “…and still hasn’t hung up after a full hour of mind-melting hold music?” The woman is replying from off-screen “Yeah…” The final panel shows the man and woman once again, the man’s hands are raised with his palms up in a pleading motion and his face shows shock as he says “WHAT’S WRONG WITH THEM?!” The woman has now turned her chair around to face the desk and still-ringing phone, fear on her face as she replies “I don’t know, but I’m scared.”
[I am a human, if I’ve made a mistake please let me know. Please consider providing alt-text for ease of use. Thank you. 💜]
This description is a little short, would you mind expanding on some of the points you’ve made? (Joking, excellent work)
I did consider whether or not to try and transcribe the notes in the sheet music but decided it was largely nonsense.
They just didn’t try hard enough. I tried calling my energy provider. You have to call more than 5 times, to even get to the robot call system. Other times they line is just dead. Then you have to listen to adverts over adverts and at the end the line just goes dead again. Trying the same number with with landline or mobile also gives differrent results, I once or twice got to the point where I it might have ringed some phone. but after a couple of rings, the line just goes dead again.
My name is common enough and I got some court paper work sent to me by mistake meant for the other guy with my name. Ended up having to call the state level court and my local one. After hours finally get the right department and its a fax machine. I ended up having to fax messages back and forth.
Makes sense now why every company always has some deep fried 10 second loop hold music…
My high school had a CD player of hold music that played, it was stupidly easy to find. We stole the CD of musik and replaced it with one by Black Sabbath. That was a good day.
Pro tip: If you start yelling the robot will forward you to a real person. I personally just yell my McDonalds order
They put it on speaker and did other stuff while waiting.
Longest wait was Telus for 2 hours. I had to cancel my service as I was moving and not getting in touch was not an option.
Hello…it is AutoGPT calling on your behalf.
Hello …it is AnswerGPT answering on our behalf.
Right. Then the AIs will both realize they can skip the call and just direct communicate.
God I love the Cisco Call Manager default hold music and I don’t know why. I don’t mind holding at all when it’s this.
Really good lmao
