Pet Peeve

[PaKettle]

Is it just me, or is making business phone calls now a total nightmare most of the time?

I'm talking about calling your bank, calling your doctor, calling your insurance co., you know, just normal everyday business calls - taking care of business...

I swear, I HATE it when I have to make several calls like these, nowadays. Seems like it wasn't this bad, say, 10 years ago, but now it's just a nightmare...

Some examples:
I call the HMO, wade through menu after menu... finally get to them... they tell me to call another dept.. They will put me through but ... I get cut off.

So now I have to call back again, wade through menu hell again...

I get ahold of someone, have to explain the situation all over again...

They tell me I'll have to be transferred. I say yes I know that, I told you that at the top of my call but you made me explain all this again first... So can you give me the direct line this time so that if I get cut off I can call them directly. Okay...

So I call them... I get through after waiting a few minutes... They tell me I didn't need to talk to them, this is the wrong dept... They give me another number to call.

I call there, wade through menu hell... Wait on hold...

Finally get through to them and they don't seem to know the answer... Put me on hold... They tell me that I should have just called Customer Service (the FIRST number I called). I say BUT I CALLED THEM ALREADY AND THEY SAID THEY COULDN'T HELP ME so I called the number they gave me, that place gave me your number and now you're telling me the original number should have handled it??!!

So I call back...

Wade through menu hell...

Wait on hold...

I immediately insist on talking to a supervisor.

The bot tells me I can't talk to a supervisor until I talk to him first and explain myself. I explain the above and then he puts me through to a supervisor.

The supervisor was actually very nice and apologetic and says he will talk to his staff about how all this happened and how to avoid it in the future.

After an hour and fifteen minutes I accomplish what should have been accomplished in 5 minutes.....

Or like today: I call my Medical Group (not the hmo, but the local medical group that is part of the HMO) to ask a question. They aren't in (12:45) and I'm told to call back at 1:00. I call back at 1:10, they still aren't in. I call back at 1:20 and finally get ahold of someone. They put me on hold and find out the answer to my question. Not too bad, compared to the above, but it's so typical: every time I call someone they are never in, and I always have to call back 2-3 times no matter WHAT time I call... and though it didn't happen today, often times I get WRONG information from them, too...

Another example:

My mom had an insurance policy that she wanted to convert from term to whole life. I handle this stuff for her, the bills come to me. So I got them to offer her a deal where they would convert her policy to Whole Life for $15/quarter.

We sent the $15. They then sent her a bill (not my address, where it should have come, I am listed with them as handling these things) for $24.99/MONTH. Of course she did not pay it and when I found out I called them.

They said, "Well, we show that you owe $24.99 and since you didn't pay it we cancelled the account."

I said, but we never OWED $24.99! We owed $16. which we paid but you sent it back. The contract my mother signed was for $15/quarter or $5/month. I have the paperwork here in front of me. It clearly states that the policy was for $5/month.

"No," the Insurance bot says, "that policy was for $24.99/month and since she did not pay it we canceled the policy."

I say "But we NEVER AGREED to any such policy. The policy my mother signed and agreed to was the one you offered her for $15/quarter and that is why we sent you a check for $15 but you sent the check back to us."

So this goes on like this for awhile, her repeating over and over about the $24.99 and me repeating over and over about how we never agreed to that and the contract we signed clearly states $15/quarter.

So finally they say I will have to fax them the original contract, which of course I have, and so I faxed it to them.

Now I am willing to bet that when I call them about it they will say they never got the fax even though the fax showed "successful transmission" and I'll end up having to re-fax it, call them back again... and on and on....

ARRRGGGGGHHHH!!!

I'll probably just end up having to file a letter of complaint with the Insurance Commissioner, which is all I can really do I guess. It's probably not even worth my time to do so but I will just in the slight hope that they might be fined or reprimanded for running such a loose ship.

I don't know when things got so messed up here in this country but like I say, it seems that it all started getting really bad about 10-15 years ago. Before that it seemed like:
1) we got better service from people like insurance, banks, etc.
2) if you had a problem the customer service was a much easier phone call and they usually resolved your problem on the first try

So am I just remembering wrong? Has it ALWAYS been this bad and I am just getting less and less patient with all the B.S.?

Or am I right, that it's just getting worse and worse every year now?

[Flamingo]

It's not just you - it's true due to very practical reasons...there are more people in this world and companies have reduced their staff to bare bones so everything is as automated as possible. So there are more and more people calling in for something and less and less live help. The live help seems to be always clueless or you may be lucky and get someone who has been there long-term and actually can answer your question. Automation is cheaper than people.

My related pet peeve is the opposite - has anyone noticed over the past few months how telemarketer calls have increased to your home? We are on the do not call listing but have seen a wild increase in "unknown" or "unavailable" calls coming all hours of the day. We had 29 "unknown" calls come in yesterday according to phone menu. We believe it is due to the economy and more and more people turning to telemarketing or cold calling on phones to try to make money.

[$$only4ever]

Pa,

I can top your pet peeve. Did you ever call, went through menu nightmare; and after 20 minutes was connected to someone who could not speak english? Then you spend another 10 minutes trying to make them understand your problem only to realize that they do not understand anything that you are saying to them. Finally, they will tell you to have a nice day and disconnect the call without resolving your problem. Geez.

[dragonnfly]

PaKettle - As for getting through to customer service and not a computer about half of the places I call if I just keep hitting 0 it gets me to a human. I have a 25 minute drive home from work and most all that is spent on the phone making appoints or straightening out accounts. If it cant get done in that time I hang up when I pull in the driveway and try again tomorrow. I have used this web site before to get directly to customer service. Most of the ones I call are listed in there.

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci1163748,00.html#

Flamingo - I have started to get alot more of those then I did previously also. I am also getting the ones that let it ring just once or twice enough to come up on the caller ID. So they hope you will call them back and see what the want or who they were. If they are accused of calling you even thought your on the DNC list they claim they dialed the wrong number thats why the hung up, but really thats how they get their business is you calling them back to see who it was. If I only had internet available without a house phone I would get rid of it in a heartbeat.

[twuoo]

In terms of the calls to medical companies, it's a game they play. Some will intentionally make you call and call and call or make you keep repeating stuff. They are trying to break you down so you just give up on the call and they win. Ultimately, you end up paying whatever it was you originally called to inquire about.

This is the worst for seniors because some of them are hard of hearing, don't understand their bill in the first place or a host of other reasons. The seniors are the ones that end up giving up on the call and end up just paying the bill. They get frustrated at the "system". And that is what the system is trying to do to you, get you frustrated so you give up and stop calling them.

[TX Bluebonnet]

I get annoyed right off the bat when I call some place and get asked to "press 1 for English, 2 for Spanish". I don't mind at all there being a Spanish speaking option. I just can't understand why add the annoying extra step of taking the phone away from the ear to press a stupid button instead of it automatically defaulting to English.

The other thing is some places I call are answered by people with such heavy accents I can't understand them, so I have to hang up and call back repeatedly until I finally get ahold of someone I can understand.

Oh, and I HATE talking aloud to a computer and the robot repeats it back and then I have to press 1 to accept/agree or 2 to correct/disagree. Then after all that it routes you to a live person who asks you to repeat/verify all the information all over again.

Grrrrr..... I'd have to say it is worse than 10-15 years ago.

[Minnymouth]

Everything is so automated these days, you can't hardly get a "live" person on the line unless you spend and hour or more on hold.

I'm one of these people that when you slap me on hold...........eat my dust!!
If you want my business, and want my money, then I want a live person to talk too...... not some dumb machine.

"unknown caller" goes straight to answering machine.

My time is money too........... may not be much money to it, but its still valuable to me!!

Besides, nobody is that important at any of these companies that I want to talk too.............

Believe me, miss a payment and THEY'LL BE CALLING YOU!

[PaKettle]

Then after all that it routes you to a live person who asks you to repeat/verify all the information all over again.

Grrrrr..... I'd have to say it is worse than 10-15 years ago.

If I get someone with a really THICK accent I ask to speak to someone who speaks English as their first language.

However, often this does not work. They say, "well, you can do that, but if you do, you may have to wait like half an hour on hold..."

[epiphany]

PaKettle - As for getting through to customer service and not a computer about half of the places I call if I just keep hitting 0 it gets me to a human. I have a 25 minute drive home from work and most all that is spent on the phone making appoints or straightening out accounts. If it cant get done in that time I hang up when I pull in the driveway and try again tomorrow. I have used this web site before to get directly to customer service. Most of the ones I call are listed in there.

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci1163748,00.html#

Flamingo - I have started to get alot more of those then I did previously also. I am also getting the ones that let it ring just once or twice enough to come up on the caller ID. So they hope you will call them back and see what the want or who they were. If they are accused of calling you even thought your on the DNC list they claim they dialed the wrong number thats why the hung up, but really thats how they get their business is you calling them back to see who it was. If I only had internet available without a house phone I would get rid of it in a heartbeat.

Usually you can try 0 or 00 or *0. One of those will work for most companies. That website is a nice find. Thanks for sharing.

ep

[jenski]

to the original poster.

yes. it's a peeve of mine too.

it's infuriating sometimes.

[momof5]

I get annoyed right off the bat when I call some place and get asked to "press 1 for English, 2 for Spanish". I don't mind at all there being a Spanish speaking option. I just can't understand why add the annoying extra step of taking the phone away from the ear to press a stupid button instead of it automatically defaulting to English.

I've noticed alot of them now dont even offer the option to press a button for Spanish but you HAVE to press 1 for English and if you dont the default language is automatically spanish.
I dont mind the spanish speaking option either but we are in America where English is the main language so shouldn't a person have to press 1 for Spanish?

[TX Bluebonnet]

I've noticed alot of them now dont even offer the option to press a button for Spanish but you HAVE to press 1 for English and if you dont the default language is automatically spanish.

I haven't run across any of those yet. Or maybe I just automatically press 1 and so wouldn't know otherwise?

I dont mind the spanish speaking option either but we are in America where English is the main language so shouldn't a person have to press 1 for Spanish?

Yeah, you would think so. Kinda boggles the mind.

[twuoo]

Good grief, I had the great displeasure of having to call customer service today on virgin mobile for my cell phone.

The voice comes on and it sounds like some hip chic and you have to answer all her questions so she can get you the right help.

I started screaming "customer service"! LOL

It didn't help

[PaKettle]

Good grief, I had the great displeasure of having to call customer service today on virgin mobile for my cell phone.

The voice comes on and it sounds like some hip chic and you have to answer all her questions so she can get you the right help.

I started screaming "customer service"! LOL

It didn't help

Glad to see I'm not the only one who finds this crap infuriating!

By the way I usually just start pushing 0 or * or # to try to get to a human right away. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

But what sucks is that even after you DO get to a human, half the time the human on the other end a) doesn't speak or understand English well; and b) doesn't have a clue. AND/OR you get transferred to the wrong dept. AND/OR get cut off and have to start all over again.

Each time I have a phone call to make like this, I try to calm myself down before hand, remind myself not to let it get me angry, remind myself to just deal with it as best I can but that anger isn't going to help, and then try to do it... But within 30 seconds my blood usually starts to boil and by the time I hang up I want to break something!

[Becca]

Thank you, thank you for understanding my pain. I am on these calls constantly it seems and they can be soooo nerve wracking to say the least.

As someone mentioned above, it really irks me when it says "Press 1 for English.." I am ALL for offering Spanish as an option, I encourage my kids to learn it and honestly, I wish I could speak it. However, I do think there should be no need to press one, it should be default ;)

The worst is customer service h*ll and then the call gets dropped and you have to start out all over again. Half the time I press anything to get an operator and start right out asking for a manager or supervisor - its the only way to get anything done right these days. Sad but true.

I usually need a Xanax after dealing with these calls. I am so glad I left customer service years ago, its a nightmare.

Becca