Assisting another customer, is that you? Actually customer service is dead, it’s just called technology.

“All of our representatives are busy assisting other customers.”

Where have I heard that before? Oh, I don’t know, like every time a call a customer service line. How the &%@!x do I get to be that other customer? As if lousy customer service isn’t bad enough, they have to add insult to injury.

“Your call is important to us, please continue to hold for the next available representative.”

At this point, you either hear music intended to sooth you or every thirty seconds or so you hear the above lame excuse. Here is a thought, forget my call, I want to be important to you, my call is not buying your product or frustrated with your service, I am damn it!

It’s really bad when you realize that you are so important that while waiting for the next representative the battery on your cell phone goes dead or worse you hit a dead spot, are cut off and have to start all over again (more good customer service). Some service centers will give you a count down on your waiting time. “You are number 18 in the queue (okay, right there with that queue stuff you know you are headed for trouble because I don’t know anyone this side of the Atlantic who waits in a queue),” or you may hear “Your waiting time is 37 minutes, would you like to call back? This from a service center that likely has a goal of answering all calls within 45 seconds, but had to lay people off because of declining sales on the product you happen to be calling about, hmmm. No I don’t want to call back, &%$#@!, I’ll end up 432 in the “queue.”

Speaking of calling back, sometimes you can leave your number and they will call you back, right! I tried that once regarding a health insurance claim, I think it was 1983 … I’m still waiting for the call. On the other hand, on the Hilton website you can ask to be called and within 30 seconds you do have a call, oh wait, you are buying something.

Another option is to call the service center precisely at 2:33 AM except of course if it is only open during normal business hours – those are the hours during which they are assisting everyone else except you.

I also want to be spoken to in the native language of the USA, which, at least now, is English, not Spanish so stop asking me to press #2 for Spanish. And besides does it really matter because once I get someone on the phone I am obliged to listen very carefully in order to pick the right words out of what I am hearing tinged with Hindi (or one of the other 3,000 languages they speak in the subcontinent). It’s almost as bad as trying to get your eral changed in Mississippi. I will be very pissed if I ever do press #2 and find that the person answering the phone actually does speak Spanish as a native language.

To call all this “customer service” is like saying I can still actually buy a gallon of ice cream or that it’s to my benefit to put ten hot dogs in a package while I can only by eight hot dog rolls in a package.

Ones frustration level is enhanced when the representative you eventually get tries to coordinate with what you are seeing on your computer screen because you first tried to use the company’s website. This morning I was in the website for some stock I own. I logged in and attempted to have my dividends reinvested. I went through the process and at the final step was met with an error message telling me to call customer service (oh goody) and tell them I encountered “error 09.” I don’t know what error 09 is, but I did have the pleasure of learning that other customers were being assisted and that my call was important. When I finally did speak with a representative, she told me she had to check and please hold a minute. Honestly, it was just about a minute when she came back and told me that my transaction had, in fact, been completed and to just ignore the infamous “error 09.” Apparently error 09 was itself an error.

What the &%#@! is going on?

I got better customer service in the mess hall during basic training fifty years ago.