Hanging On The Telephone

I’ve spent a lot of time on hold this week waiting to speak to people about a broken washer dryer and the experience has renewed my contempt for automated answering systems used by big companies.

You have to jump through so many hoops to speak to a real person these days which has to be one of the most soul destroying parts of modern life.

This particular company insisted on playing moronic music whilst advertising their latest products on a loop. I sat on hold listening to the madness inducing soundtrack after punching in a series of numbers that could probably open up a Bank Of England safe. To add insult to injury when I finally got to speak to someone I didn’t have a serial number I needed so had to abandon the call and start all over again (my fault I know but still highly annoying).

In the end I spent over an hour on hold only to be given another number for an engineer who might be able to sort out a visit to my home sometime between now and the end of eternity. All this wasted time to fix an appliance that went out of guarantee just before I reported the fault, typical hey?

I spoke a bit about my experience on the show this week and pretty much everyone who got in touch shared my frustrations with automated telephone systems. One person said they’d been on hold for over 2 hours recently; it’s not good enough is it?

Please feel free to share your experiences with me but for now that’s enough ranting, I’ve got to get back to my washboard and mangle!  

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