Press "1"

It's soapbox time again for me. This is not necessarily a "Mommy" blog but I'm fired up so here goes.

Today's subject is "Press 1 for English and Press NOTHING for a live person"

Recently I have had to make a few phone calls to the mortgage company and insurance companies. No big deal, right? Ordinarily it wouldn't be if you needed to check a balance or payment date or even a payment address. But if you have a question that has more depth...sit back and get comfy. Hope you have a speaker phone because you are going to be there for a while.

A simple phone call immediately takes on an annoying quality for me when the first thing I have to do is press 1 for English. MY OWN LANGUAGE. A language spoken fluently throughout the world and I have to choose it. I'm calling from the US to a company located in the US and still have to choose the language in which we both speak! Don't even get me started on US based companies who now outsource their customer service overseas...I'll rant for hours about that.
But I digress.

I believe that this particular annoyance is probably consider such by the majority of callers regardless of the purpose for their call. I'm not going to spout off about how we live in an English speaking country and that immigrants should be required or at the least greatly encouraged to immediately develop a rudimentary working knowledge of the language widely accepted as THE language in this country. That being said, if you need to establish an account that might require calling into a customer service center, you should first have to speak the predominant language of said business in order to fill out the paperwork and establish the account!

How in the world would I establish electrical service in Zimbabwe or Brazil if I did not in fact know enough of the language to communicate my need! Of course, I am one of those pesky intelligent, educated people who would learn basic phrases BEFORE I went to said country.
I think I have a solution to the "Press 1 for English" problem.....make speakers of other languages press 1!

"Thank you for calling XYZ Company. We value our customers and would like to expedite your call as quickly as possible. If you speak a language other than English, please press 1. For English speaking customers, please hold the line for the next LIVE representative to assist you."

That leads me to my next rant....how hard can companies make it to get to a live person on the phone. In this day and age, most people first go to the internet to attempt to answer their question. If I'm calling you it's because the basic information on the internet could not answer my question or correct my problem. So running through 10,000 voice prompts to review the same basic information IS NOT NECESSARY. Give me a choice to speak to a live person. And don't, I repeat, don't hang up on me after making so many "wrong" choices.

I called my mortgage company to ensure the receipt of our new home owners insurance policy and it literally took me 30 minutes to get to a live person. That was after two other phone calls in which I was never able to get past the voice prompts and got hung up on both times. I swear, I wanted to throw the phone across the room. Thank goodness I wasn't calling from my cell phone or I'd have run out of minutes.

Another lovely experience recently was also with my mortgage company. I needed to fax some information to a specific department. Fine, the fax number was supplied to me over the phone by the actual person it took me 30 minutes to get. It was also available on the internet. No problem. Now three weeks have passed and there have been numerous attempts on my part to confirm the receipt of the information I faxed but.....wait for it....I can not obtain a phone number for that department to call them. The live person I was able to reach again in customer service told me that they don't have a phone number. Only a fax number. Apparently whenever anyone in the company needs to speak to these people they have to fax them also.

Sounds like Nirvana, doesn't it? Never have to talk to annoying co-workers again...make them fax you!

So now I sit and continue trying to figure out why I haven't heard anything from them regarding my fax and how I can get in on the "fax only" action.

Here's a thought...I bet if I don't pay the payment, I'll have more phone calls than Ma Bell!

In a nutshell, I don't want to press 1 for English and I want to speak to a live person within the first 2-3 minutes of my call. That's it. I'm not asking for miracles here. Just a live person to speak to in a relatively short period of time without having to key in more numbers than the national debt. Oh and, I'd also like to request an English speaker on the other line.....a fluent one. But that's another blog.