Your Call is Important to Us

No, not the book by Laura Penny. It's a good book, but that's not what, or who, I'm talking about today.

Here's the deal. Paul English is my Hero of the Day—or as they say in the Church of the SubGenius, my Short-Duration Personal Savior (ShorDurPerSav). He's maintaining a list of the different ways to escape from voice mail hell and get yourself connected to an actual living breathing space-occupying resource-consuming real human.

Just look for the company in question on the list.

Even if you're like me and prefer to avoid speaking to real people when possible, this is handy stuff to know. My suspicion is that, by the time most reasonable people have decided to risk a phone call to some company's "customer support" line, the situation has escalated way past the point where an automated system would be capable of offering any constructive guidance. Automated systems being what they are, i.e. stupid.

In at least a couple of cases, AT&T Wireless and Compaq, the list claims "no easy escape" from voice mail.