Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Telephone

Is it just me or does it seem like every phone call to everywhere this month seems to have a recording that says "due to unusually high call volume, wait times are longer than normal, please continue to hold." 

At what point does that "unusually high call volume" become normal?  At what point should they either hire more people or just admit that it's not worth it to hire more people and instead we just have to wait.

Phone calls I've had to make recently and gotten this message:

North Texas Tollway Association (I got a bill for about $5 in the mail, but I've had a tolltag for years)
A county in Pennsylvania (trying to determine the amount of a child support lien to settle a case)
The company where I ordered invitations for my husband's surprise party (my fault for putting the wrong zip code in the shipping address, nice of them to expedite a replacement order, but why all the holding?)
UPS (trying to track a missing package, referred to post office)
Post office national number
Post office local number would go on this list, but instead, all 4 times I tried to call, it would just ring endlessly for about 5 minutes before I'd give up.
My doctor's office to schedule an appointment.

And the phone calls where I haven't gotten this message:

Dallas County health and human services (needed to get my Hepatitis A vaccination information and available hours/cost for a typhoid booster) (this suprised me, given my recent luck, I expected at least half an hour hold time, not the instant operator)
My hair salon
Making a restaurant reservation

I guess I don't really mind holding for a few minutes.  It would be nice not to, but I understand it would be expensive to have enough operators to take all the calls all the time.  I just wish they wouldn't lie and claim the call volume is unusually high.  Can I do some kind of deceptive trade practices act suit and get data on their call volume to prove it's always "high" (at which point "high" becomes normal)? 

These are the things that irritate me...

2 comments:

  1. And I wish all places you needed to call and make appointments had a way to do it online. I love that a lot of customer service departments have gone to using instant messaging for customer service. I do not like to use the phone!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I have definitely noticed this as well - it has become a default for many places it seems ... interesting that when I had to call Apple in the middle of all of this iPhone 6 craziness I never got that - sure there were delays, but nothing so off-putting as 'unusually high call volume ...

    ReplyDelete