customer service
Mood:  irritated
I am fed up with customer service. Wouldn't it be nice to call for help and actually have the phone answered by a real person instead of silicone sam the automated answer man or his wife - silicone sally? How about if the first person you spoke with could actually help you with your problem? A person feels like they are on a telephone merry go round as they are transferred from department to department.

And don't get me started on the nationality of the person answering the phone, most often Peter is actually Pierre and Ralph is actually Raul. I guess they think that Americanizing their names will fool you into thinking that you are actually speaking to someone down the street, not from the other side of the world who could care less if the stupid American gets their problem fixed or not. They dutifully follow their answer trees and when the tree says to transfer you get transferred to Department X, and now you are talking to David (actually Darhan) who is probably in the next cube over and just has a different set of answers on his tree, and guess what - his answers won't help with your question either.

It boils down to a battle of wills. They hope to grind you down until finally you realize the futility of ever getting help and give up. Phone rates and foreign labor are cheap. So they can flip you around from person to person for pennies a day. The only thing you have on your side is persistance. The hope that thru some random process you will be connected with the right person at the right time and they can answer your question.

I am posting this after spending 35 minutes with a cellular company - Sprint. I was transferred 5 times and finally the person knew what to do and it took like a minute to tell me what to do. But I recently did similiar stints with a Aetna - a health insurance company and Skyway - a satellite company. It's an epidemic.