I won't mention the phone companies except that it consists of three letters joined by an ampersand and has been around practically since there have been phones.
Whenever I want to pay my bill or ask a question of the company, I have to call up and go through the voice response unit, the VRU.
The company has a problem with this thing in that it cannot understand the plain vanilla Great Midwest Accent, you know, the one that all the anchors speak on the news, that is spoken from Ohio to Kansas, etc., the American accent that is the lack of an accent. I don't have a speech impediment, but I cannot understand why the stupid thing cannot understand when I say "414" it hears "404". I've tried talking in a normal tone of voice, I've tried enunciating. To no avail. Sooner or later my accent throws the stupid thing off and I end up getting connected to a person.
Then they charge ME $5 because THEIR machine doesn't work!
I've complained and complained to the person at the other end. They always say they'll pass it along, but nothing ever happens. And now I know why. Remember that $5 charge to talk to a person?
If AT&T (oops!) has a VRU that doesn't work worth a damn, why would they fix it? That would cost money (but their programmers are on salary, right?) and then they'd lose out on all those $5 charges when people DON'T have to talk to a real live person (and they're paying those people whether the phone rings or not, right?)
I guess their attitude is showing: We're the phone company and we will because we can!
It's time for me to vote with my feet and get someone whose VRU can understand a Midwest accent. I've about had enough of lousy service.
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