Push #4, to be totally pissed off.

I discussed this with one of my sisters the other day, and she has the same gripe, so I don't feel alone in this gripe. Why can't we have people answer business phones anymore? I know, it's a way to cut costs, and those that propose it will tell you that it is more efficient, because you can direct the caller to the correct department to get the help they need. That sounds good on paper, but I freaking hate these things. Here is my latest run in with "efficiency." I am a member of AAA. That is AAA, not AA. It was time for me to renew my membership, so I wanted to call them so I could also add Marcy to the coverage. I usually don't have her on the account, because it costs more money and usually, we are together, so if there is an issue, I can cover it with my card. With Marcy traveling to MN alot, I wanted her to have an account so there wouldn't be any issues if she needed help. I called the main number and oh how happy I was to hear, "For English, press one." Crap, here we go. I start down the press this press that road and get to the services menu. This is where they list all of the services they offer, which I don't remember what they all were, but the first was for information regarding their insurance and once we got down to number five, that option sounded the closest to what I wanted. That is part of the problem, sometimes the choices are vague, so I'm not sure if I want number 4 or number five, but I'm positive I don't want 1, 2 or 3. I have to push a few more buttons, but I feel I'm heading to talking to someone to give this business my money, which is what they want. After I push what I hope is my last button, the recorded message comes on and says "Our insurance office is currently closed, goodbye." HOLY SHIT,I have no idea how I got to the insurance office, but I can say with 100% certainty, I NEVER pushed a button that the recording said was insurance related. Now they just hung up on me after I worked my way through their verbal maze like a rat, only to find out that the cheese isn't there, it was closed. Now I'm not an expert on efficiency, but I'm pretty sure that this would not fall into that category. If a customer calls you, and wants to not only give you the money they owe you, but more money, hanging up on them should be waaaaaay down on the list of possible outcomes to a phone call to that company.

Another issue with these things, are they can't always understand what you are saying. I had called a place and they said to say the option I wanted, which I did. I apparently was asking for either something they didn't do, or were trying to frustrate me enough that I would hang up. It was working, I was about to hang up, when I decided, instead, to just yell a curse word in frustration, and see what happened. It said it didn't understand. My 10 year old would have understood that word, it meant I was pissed, so they obviously decided to not recognize those words because I'm guessing I'm not the first to utter it at the recording lady. I decided to try a new trick and I said "operator." It understood, but tried to get me to just speak my way through by asking me if I wanted one of "the following categories." I just kept saying operator until some lady actually answered the phone, and I think the first thing I said to her was "operator."

I know that I've had some of these things actually work, but I just think it would be so much easier to tell one person who answers the phone, who I want to talk to, and they connect me to them. Done, game over and I don't have callouses on my pointer finger for pushing 100 buttons to get to a place that a halfway intelligent person could have gotten me to in 2 seconds. I'm just saying.