[user3939382]

What I see is that these companies would be happy to waste 1000 hours of customers' time to save themselves $5. So even if the useful cases of the IVR/automation is rare, it's still a net win from their perspective. Especially in markets (most of them) where it's not going to be a competitive difference because they all do it.

The insult to injury is the prerecorded "Your call is important to us" Yeah I'm sure it is, that's why you have a nearly-zero-cost robot telling me that while you put me on hold because you didn't want to hire an adequate numbers of reps, right?