On the flipside, think of the joy of realizing you've finally been connected to a smart, competent person who is empowered to solve your problem. It is like finding a call center unicorn.

It really depends on what sort of organization you're dealing with. My credit union has always been a pleasure to deal with because their phone people are all hired and trained locally. On the other hand they only take calls during business hours which can be a little awkward when I'm in another timezone.

That's like saying death is a good thing because you still get to live a few decades.

That's not a terribly uncommon position, not everyone wants to live forever. Arguably it's a healthy attitude to take, since death will come for you eventually whether or not you make peace with that inevitability.

Lots of people say that every time the subject of human immortality arises.

I had this experience once and it was the result of finally getting a local call centre with better trained and empowered employees (most calls were being farmed out to overseas call centres which followed a very simple script).

Haha. Meanwhile all the business people meet at conferences and get high on AI and blockchain... get the real easy stuff right first!!!

This. So many times I dictate or enter my account number, only to have to say it again once I get an actual human.

Can't they see what I just typed before? Seriously, how bad can this be.

Sounds like calling any medical insurance or provider company in the US. It's the ubiquity of fax that is most flabbergasting.

It's one thing I don't miss at all after getting out of health tech. I hope to never read the phrase "secure fax" again.

This happens way too often. I wish I knew why systems ended up like this. Seems to be a business opportunity to fix them once and for all. This is 2018, we can do better

USAA really impressed me recently with a really slick feature: I was in their mobile application, and realized that what I wanted to do was a little too complex for what the app could handle. So I called support, and they (1) automatically identified me based on my number and (2) knew I was just using the app, and asked if I'd like to transfer directly to a person!

It is probably not the most complex integration technically, but it made the experience so smooth.

The app also has a useful feature to launch the website with session tokens, so it keeps you logged in if you were logged into the app.

So if you know where the thing you're looking for is on the website, you can just launch the website and use that.

Super simple feature but it seems like for so many companies, if you go online, it redirects you to their mobile site which has been "phased out" and tells you to the get their app, which you have and would have used if it had the feature you needed.

For such a "post computer" world it seems ridiculous how often I throw my hands up and find my laptop when trying to complete an online chore from my mobile.

USAA can be pretty great. In some ways they are ahead in tech, and have been for a long time. I do wish they'd add support for virtual credit cards tho.

It seems like it's a pattern to ensure security and discourage people from calling.

Vendors do this because they know they can get away with it, i.e. no perceived counter party risk. However what they don't understand, is that there is a HUGE counter party risk.

If its a charge on my credit card or checking, that's what I do, I give them this counter party risk. I call and do a charge back. Basically after 20 minutes with a vendor on hold, I declare that they are being unreasonable and they are unable or unwilling to refund me, I call the bank to do this charge back.

Now, what you tell the bank is critical. For whatever reason, vendors have been able to un-do my chargeback. So instead, I tell the bank that I dispute the charge -- but that I am also disputing the method of payment. So if they argue that the charge is valid in the investigation, I say that is fine -- however, the bank is not authorize on my behalf to pay them, and if they think the charge is authorized they must contact me to arrange a different method of payment. And under no circumstances can they use the bank to make payment. So yeah if they argue the charge is legit, that's fine, contact me (I wish I could put them on hold haha), and I'll pay them -- but the bank can't. The bank likes this because they are off the hook and I like it because they don't get to screw me. Worked every time.

If everyone did this, and made this a huge country party risk, these vendors would stop putting people on hold and ignoring or purposely inadequately addressing their greivences with their product/services.

A solution for me is to avoid dealing with shitty companies like this and seek online-only alternatives (with a good web UI), and failing that, if a shit company screws up and I can’t fix it quickly through their awful customer support I stop paying and let them call me.

It’s funny how they never keep their promises of calling you back until you actually stop giving them money. They also magically start paying more attention to what you say, and complaint letters that went unanswered for months and presumed “lost” suddenly become found and answered.

how can you dispute payment method especially when they tell that you used your card with OTP/signature giving your consent to use this payment method? Just trying to understand so can use this technique if situation arises :)

The reason why is that the phone tree/IVR and back-office systems were developed by someone like IBM, Accenture, Oracle, etc instead of actually competent developers. The budget being blown on the aforementioned companies, they have no choice but to stick with it.