[pdonis]

> There is never anything I want from the phone tree except a human operator. If you could automate my request then you should have done it over the far clearer interface of the web page.

This. It's particularly infuriating that now many phone trees don't even have a built-in "I want to talk to a human, now" option. Hitting "0" used to be a fairly common way to do that, but doesn't appear to be any more. Often I have to wade through three or four levels of phone menus just to get to something that will take me to a human.

[mjevans]

I absolutely agree, and I also hate the automated chat systems which are even _worse_ than calling on the phone. It's trying to get the 'call tree' scripts out to chat. When if I'm online, a program script should be able to cover 80% of the issues, and the other 20% need a human touch for collecting the correct data or providing features missing; often intentionally from the website.

The local power company does this very well for reporting outages, and takes data that's hard to fit through a human that can recognize what the data means and get it to the correct departments and people.

Cable is the WORST in that respect. With zero transparency on what the root cause or investigation status. Also, insufficient and critically lacking detail (Is it JUST me, or is it my block, or is it the whole neighborhood or city, etc).

[wyager]

My favorite is when companies (looking at you, UPS) provide a phone menu with a very narrow list of choices, and if none of them matches what you want, you're just out of luck. There's no "other" option.

(In reality, you lie to get through to a human, but come on.)

Also, the difference between talking to somebody reading a script in Bangalore and someone on the inside who actually knows what they are doing (if you can manage to convince someone to connect you to the latter) is crazy. The drones handling customer support info often have essentially zero information on top of what's given to the customer.

One time UPS lost my package (bona fide lost in a warehouse, maybe stolen or something) and the phone CS drones assured me that it was on the way, just running late, was on the truck now, etc. etc.

I managed to berate them into connecting me with a US-based operator who, after asking how the hell I actually got her number, gave me the real tracking info, which is completely hidden from consumers and made it very clear that my package was gone.