This morning NPR aired a story about a blogger who is publishing shortcuts around the annoying telephone triage systems that many large companies use to route calls. It’s not uncommon for people to be shuffled around these systems for 10 or 15 minutes trying to perform a simple task such as paying a credit card bill or canceling a cable channel.
Today, I am trying to order replacement ink cartridges from Dell. Dell sucks because they do not let companies such as Quill or Office Max sell their cartridges. You must buy them directly from Dell. And, might I add, nobody at Dell speaks fluent English AND has a static-free telephone connection. As I write this, I have been on the line with them for 20 minutes and have been transferred through at least 3 different divisions and as many “customer service” reps including home office, government and medium and small business. This is because I am not allowed to order things from the internet directly. I must mail, phone or fax in my orders. But, alas, that is a blog for a different day.
So I have a brilliant flash back to this morning’s NPR story. (By the way, I am now on hold with a rep from India who is trying to find HIS fax number so I can fax in a tax-exemption sheet. 5 minutes because he doesn’t know his own fax number.) I pull up the link on NPR’s website and find the blog address only to open and it and see, alas, there is an entry for Dell’s system but, unfortunately, I now have other problems with Dell. I have just learned that they set up my account wrong and want to charge me sales tax. I can’t pay sales tax or it will reflect poorly in our annual audit. I can fax them a new tax-exempt form but, unfortunately, because of the holiday there will be nobody to approve it until next week. Bugger. I trudge on. Perhaps, if I’m lucky, I’ll be finished before lunch.
HHHHEEEEEEEYYYYY wait a cotton-picking darn minute! I know damn well they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in freaking India. What a crock!!! They lied to me….and I fell for it. (Up to 40 minutes and counting. In fact, the call timer on my phone has given up keeping track….this would have been so much easier if the person needing the ink wouldn’t have waited until their cartridge was empty before telling me…)
Incidentally, the blog with the shortcuts is fantastic and has a TON of shortcuts on it. You should check it out.
2 comments:
Hahaha...here's an update. The call timer on my phone now says that I have been on the phonr for 2426 minutes and 26 secomds. I think Dell has driven it freaking crazy too...
I listened to the same report this morning (let's hum that song "somewhere out there" in solidarity for our common acts this morning...)
As an aside, since I'm (among other things) the IT buyer, I work with Dell a lot a lot... do you not have a dedicated account rep? If not and you want to figure out how to get one, I'll ask around my Dell contacts... they probably know these things.
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