Beat the Automated Answering System (Find-A-Human)
 

searched for this, got blank pages

there was an article about this in USAToday quite a while back
but here is a site with some of the valuable info you need to speed up your customer service interactions over the phone

https://www.quickbase.com/db/bam6rdiey?a=q&qid=5
doesn't paste well, but check it out

I just ignore all requests to press anything-eventually the bot gets the idea I must be on a rotary phone and puts me through to a person-works 99% of the time....

If you ever call amtrack -- they have a voice automated system that is actually pretty good (as long as it can understand you) But to bypass it all -- you can say agent at any point and you get connected directly to a person.

On American Airlines, you can by pass all the voice menus by hitting 0

At my bank, you can bypass all the upselling messages by hitting 1

good point, you don't always want to bypass the system.

I spent 10 minutes on the phone with Capital One trying to report a found credit card, yesterday. What a pain. No, I don't have social security or zip code info, I found the f'ing card. Even after getting through to a human, they wanted my personal info. No thanks, I did you a favor, I reported the card, you don't need my name or anything else.

Tuesday I had no internet service so I called the cable company. I made the mistake of putting in my home phone as apparently within the last 6 months, they went totally bot-crazy.
I get a woman-bot which then proceeds to tell me to answer yes or no-do I have a modem that also uses voicemail? no "ok, great. now, let's begin some trouble-shooting....." This went on for several minutes with the bot telling me when I am done with whatevah, just say 'continue'. After about the 5th time, I said 'this is fucking nuts' to which I got 'I'm sorry, I did not understand your response. Please say, "continue"....
I hung up, redialed, did NOT respond to any prompt and finally got a real person to whom I said, 'that damned bot is the worst thing I have ever encountered aside from a meddling mother-in-law and please put that down as an official complaint'.
Nice to know I made someone's day a little brighter with some laughs.....

was interesting when we had to call israel and got it all in hebrew.... and none of us spoke hebrew.

This list is great, but every so often, many of the companies change their menu options....

For some reason, I get a strange pleasure out of screaming obscenities at the bots to see what they do -- similar to IM'ing SmarterChild with random phrases to see his response. Even if I get the "I'm sorry, I did not understand you" option, I get to chuckle as the person near me watches me scream "NO FUCK YOU I DON'T WANT THAT" into the phone (and hears the faint "voice" of the bot from my speaker -- thinking I'm actually talking to someone).