10 Most Frustrating Times to Get Stuck with an Automated Phone Attendant

There are few things in everyday life that are as frustrating as having to deal with an automated phone attendant. It’s bad enough that you have to call customer support to begin with, but knowing that you’ll have to run the obstacle course that is your service provider’s phone answering service is just too much. The following are the ten most frustrating times to deal with that:

1. When things stop working – When your computer has the blue screen of death or your home electricity has just gone out the last thing you need is to jump through hoops over the phone. It’s always when you need help fast that this happens, isn’t it?
2. When your home phone is dying – Your cordless phone is beeping at you to inform you that its battery is almost dead. And naturally it’s exactly at the same time that you’re reaching the end of mile 26 of the customer service marathon, with nary a real human being in sight.
3. When your cell phone is on its last few minutes – Alternately, your prepaid cell phone is on its last ten minutes’ worth of available talk time while you’re stuck on hold. You have to either, A) gamble that you’ll have sufficient time to complete your call or worse, B) hang up to refill your minutes and lose your place in the call queue.
4. When your cell phone’s signal is on its way out – A sister scenario to the minutes one above, this time you are on the road and traveling toward the boundary of your mobile’s coverage area. The signal is just strong enough for you to confirm that yes, you are indeed still on hold, but your phone call is important to us.
5. When it interferes with ending your work day – You began your call from your desk at work, at 4:40 PM, hoping to get in touch with tech support for an issue before going home for the day. It’s now 4:59, one minute to quitting time, and you haven’t talked to a person yet. Now it’s either stay late, or start your work day off tomorrow with the same issue still pending.
6. When you’ve got to go – Like a two year-old needing a potty break, you shift your weight back and forth on each leg nervously. Your train is about to arrive, or your flight is about to board, and your call is going nowhere. Now you fear, so are you, unless you reach a tech support guy or just hang up.
7. When you can’t find your issue amongst the options – It seems to happen more often than not for some reason, but there’s nothing more frustrating than when you’re given a menu of options to choose from and of them none address your specific reason for calling. So you pick something that sounds reasonably close, wait for someone to answer and, ultimately, are told you need to be transferred. Back to square one. Aaarrrgggh!
8. When you know the answer to a quiz show question – You’re driving to work listening to a morning radio show. The DJ asks listeners to call in with the answer to a trivia question worth $10,000. And by God, you know the answer! So you frantically call in with one hand, while deftly steering through rush-hour traffic. And instead of getting Dr. Johnny Fever, your call goes to automated purgatory.
9. When you’re being charged per minute – For those of you who frequent those singles chat lines (you know who you are), you understand the frustration of dialing into a number at a fairly stiff rate per minute, only to be jerked around for an eternity. And all while the meter’s running – not to mention your motor. Tsk-tsk.
10. When it’s a medical emergency – So you’re dialing 9-1-1, with a medical emergency. Your call is answered on the first ring (yes!): Your call is important to us. Please stay on the line until the next dispatcher is available. OK, so that hasn’t actually happened to you yet, but give it time.

Taken From Landline Phone Service