#phone trees

Why does the service you only let me access if I confirm MULTIPLE TIMES that I cannot find what I need on your website do this, Royal Mail?

At one point in the Commonwealth Edison Energy customer service phone menu, you have an option to access a dedicated line just for tree-related matters.

But if you mess up your credit card number (or your cell phone just sucks at touch tone stuff and it doesn't go through right), it says "That was not a valid entry"...and then immediately continues to same end prompt: "If this is correct, press 1.  Otherwise, press 2."

This causes me pause, because the statement that it wasn't a valid entry is in fact correct, but 1 is actually just the "let's move onto the next step" button, and I need to press 2 to indicate that it wasn't correct, even though the statement was.  I once pressed 1, just to see what would happen, and it continued but then of course crashed and burned when it actually tried to charge the card.

A certain cable company recently started charging a monthly fee for its cable modem.  It gave us “customers” (read prisoners) the choice to pay the monthly fee or buy our own modems.  After several attempts to buy the modem at a brick and mortar store that failed miserably, and by now several monthly fees later, I ordered the prescribed modem online.  Now comes the fun part.   I install the modem and make the call to activate it.  Service outage.  I call later.  Service outage.  I call again.  Service outage.  On Monday, one of those little niggling thoughts crosses my mind not to do it, but I ignore it and return the company’s modem.  They hand me a receipt.  I have my smart phone so I don’t feel the lack of service all week.  Now comes Friday.  I take the day off.   I turn on my computer.  Oh yeah.  I need to activate my modem.  I call.  I remember the numbers to select, or think I do, to skip several branches of the phone tree.  After a couple of failed calls, I get a rep on the line.  Remember that niggling thought?  I now learn that my account has been closed.  Phone trees and customer service agents who lack the discretion to do anything bring out the worst version of me.  Since the best version isn’t all that stellar, let’s just say I’m like a grizzly bear in an itchy tutu. It makes sense with no modem I have no service, but did the guy who took my equipment ask why I was turning it in?  No.  But here’s the catch-22, the gotcha that inhabits all inane bureaucracies.  To open a new account, I have to use their modem.  I have two choices.   Make an appointment.  Wait for the guy to come.  He will, if the past is any indication, show up an hour and a half after the latest time he is supposed to come.  He will install the cable company’s modem, activate it, take it out and install mine.  Half a day minimum down the drain.  Scenario two:  I go pick up their modem, install it, get on the phone with them and activate it, and if I’m lucky, uninstall it, and install mine and activate it in the same phone call.  Then I’ll schlep their modem back to them, for the second time.  Get the picture?  Now I’m peaked.  The level of condescension that I tend to exhibit during these encounters would melt a polar ice cap.  Did said cable company think about this inane policy when they put this new policy in place?  Obviously not.   I ask for the customer service rep’s supervisor and one hour two minutes and 36 seconds after I start the call, I am still waiting to be bumped up to level three to figure out why my laptop still won’t connect to the internet.  Should I get off the call and risk having to start this call all over again?  I don’t have to make this decision; it is made for me when my call is dropped.  By this point my ire has deflated into resignation.  I’m in it for the long haul.  I try to think rationally.  I wonder if I need to get my wireless router to recognize the new modem.  This turns out to be one-third of the problem.  The mac id that the representative wanted was different from the one I gave the tier two guy.  I have to turn off the modem and router several times before the router recognizes the new modem.  And I suggest to the rep that I reboot my laptop, which I do, and finally I get service.   And how did this all start?  Oh yeah, because I tried to get online to look in my email for the key to “activate” my internet security which I had supposedly activated months ago when I renewed it, but which a pop up window informed me that I had not done.  (Think about how I could get this popup window on my laptop if I’m not online, or was it because I wasn’t online that I got this – a conundrum I won’t ponder.)