alt Hacker NewsAs an exception to the exception, a lot of automated telephone systems have a tree of options, and they try really hard to avoid giving you a real person, and none of the options are helpful. But some of them are programmed to detect swearing and direct users to a representative.
So a valid strategy is to swear at the automated system and then be polite to the real human that you get.
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Yeah, far too many systems try to cover every case in the menu and deny access to a human--but never have I seen one that actually covered anything like every case. They cover the easy stuff and you have to get hostile with the robot over anything else.
Or our local pharmacy--it has it's own number but if you actually need a human you're dumped into the general phone tree and have to go back to the pharmacy and persuade the robot to let you through to a human. And the designers never put things in the menu for the stuff that needs a human.
> As an exception to the exception, a lot of automated telephone systems have a tree of options, and they try really hard to avoid giving you a real person, and none of the options are helpful. But some of them are programmed to detect swearing and direct users to a representative.
It usually just works to hit 0 (maybe more than once) or say "talk to an agent," even if those aren't options you're explicitly given.
Detecting swears just seems over-compliated.
There’s generally no repercussions to bullying robots — or being nice to one. Aggressively direct, if not outright unsympathetically cruel, is probably the best approach in all scenarios
Another one is to say random words and they’ll think you have a disability, but be careful saying random words will mess with your head a bit.
Perhaps prepare by pre-generating a list of random words to read.
>none of the options are helpful
Yeah. I got locked out of my capital one account for a "fraud alert" last week. When I tried to login a message said "Call Number XXX" When I called that number I had to go through an endless phone tree and not single option was about fraud alerts or being locked out of accounts. I had to keep going through a forced chute of errors before after about 30 min I finally was able to speak to someone.
Even when I finally got a human they seemed confused about what happened and I had to be transferred several times.
Why would you put a phone number that does not even as a sub option address the issue?