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BRUTALITY FACTOR: Medium

If you think talking to a customer care rep is a pain. More than half of it is caused trying to get to that person. I am talking about the automated telephone systems.

Gone are the days when a sweet sounding lady picks up your call and transfers it to the right person. Now the companies have sent her home and employed a piece of software crap that does her job which they think is more efficient. 

The first annoyance is when they ask which language you want, English or Spanish. Well, I am not calling from Mexico. So that's a dumb question to begin with. By then you have your doubts about the company. And then they read out all the one million options they have and you have to choose them with your 9 button keypad.

By the time they read out the option for number 9, I would have forgotten what they had said for number 1. So I hang up and dial again. And they always seem to change their menu options, so I can't hit zero to get the operator directly. It was never changed in the first place. They just want me to hear all the options, get confused and hang up instead.

And after solving the first puzzle I was asked to enter my account number, social security number, zip code etc so that they can pull up my account ahead of time. Good thinking. And then the message plays saying, that they are going to record everything I say and, they can might as well use it against me in the court of law. I can't use any obscenities now, can I?

Now I was put on hold for about two days and every five minutes they kept telling me I was important to them and to hold on just a wee bit longer. Finally the guy from India picks up and his accent throws me off right away. And then he asks me my name, account number, social etc. Good thinking gone pretty bad here. Well didn't I enter it two days back? Why should I keep repeating that over and over again? After about an hour of arguing, I was convinced that they are not going of any help. Then his manager wanted to talk to me. He was a bigger idiot, so I just hung up. 

This becomes even worse when the system is voice activated. Thanks to the advancement in technology, the system can understand what you say. Actually no. I don't have an Indian accent anymore and nor an American accent. I am in between and am confused. So I get the system confused too. Half the time it bails out on me and connects me to a rep. Well I guess it actually helped me now.

Since most of the services are available only during regular work hours means, I have to call from my desk at work. Which means I will be yelling out on the phone, to get it to understand me. Thanks to that, the people sitting close to me now know my SSN, address, credit card number and my medical history. With this I don't see why people are surprised with the number of identity thefts.

Its costs companies on an average of 5 bucks a minute to talk to the customer care people. Which is a lot of money. So they want to make sure they get you to the right person or just make you give up in the process.

A little piece of info for people which, not many know about. Every time the rep puts you hold. You hear music, they don't. They just hear you like always. So keep the expletives on hold.