"History is a wonderful thing, if only it was true"
-Tolstoy

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Utilities ?

1) Sprint Long Distance
You dial up the 800 number, confirm the balance due and key in the credit card number and expiration.
OK, all of this is straightfoward.

Bot voice, which sounds like a stern grade school teacher, reads back the information with query if this is correct press 2.

You key 2
Then the bot reads your confirmation number and asks if you want it either repeated or "if this is correct press 2"

Huh?
Does not compute ... Sprint gives me confirm number with no further information and expects me to confirm their confirmation.

2) Charter Communicatons, my internet provider, via cablemodem
So ... service is out.
Dial the 800 number, before you get series of decision trees to get to service information, there is an offer to let Charter be your phone service.
Decision tree almost invariabley all Bot's
Message that they are either out of service or down for maintiance...

Sooo ... I want to call Charter to check service and they offer to have a service that may not work?
Huh.

Almost as good as the our Electric Utility website that offers estimated time to be back in service during an outage .... which most likely knocks out my internet service.

Who dreams this stuff up?

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