THE CHEAT SHEET

It seems that all of the companies that any of us do business with have begun a new thing, in the past it was bad enough when they began to have their phones answered by an automated system that you had to listen to in order to be directed to a human response. It all seemed so impersonal, but we all got used to it.

It usually went something like this, you called, a recording came on and gave you a brief instruction 'for billing press one, for a copy of your bill press two, to speak to a representative stay on the line' and so on. Most of us would opt for speaking to a rep. at least I would, I want to know that my buiness has been taken care of and not left in the hands (haha) of a recording.

But recently they have delevoped an even more complicated system, so that they do not have to deal with their clients at all.
A new 'automated voice response' system that can answer your questions and even if you don't give them the exact information as long as you come within the ballpark area, it can anticipate what the mistake in your sentence was, they can respond by saying something like, I believe you wanted to know about-blah, blah blah-- is that correct. In fact I happened upon one of those sytems yesturday and I have to admit, it kind of shocked me as to how well it could anticipate and respond. However it can also be extremely annoying when you want to discuss some of your business with someone and you can't get through unless you are willing to play, guess what I really want with the automated system and hope it will break or run out of possiblities and maybe, just maybe you will get to hear a human voice, not always though, sometime when all else fails the damn thing hangs up on you.

I'm sure it's a great invention for all of these big companies. The total goal is to save time, save money and eleminate employees with the automated response system.

Well to me it is annoying, impersonal, and an insult to be treated like you are not important enough to talk to when you are a paying client. The Phone company has gotten especially bad about using this new form of automated almost human like anticipating monster. The problem is I have to play word games with it for an hour to get through to a human whos response is almost worse then the automation.
I think they also must have put the billing on some sort of automated system, because every other month our phone plan has been changed without our permission and the bill is then a different amount each month and I have to call, get past the metal brainiac, and try to straighten out the mess . I keep asking why this keeps happening without our permission and no one knows, maybe they need to ask the metal monster.

At last someone has come up with the help we need to bypass all of the bull. He feels as I do, when you are paying for their services you deserve to be heard. At least the common curtesy of speaking to someone human would be nice for a change.

It's called the 'Cheat Sheet'. He has figured out how to bypass the automated system and speak to a human by punching in certain buttons ( or codes) on your phone, each companies code will be different. His name is Paul English, and I think I'm in love.

Here is a little of what his cheat sheet will have on it.

The IVR Cheat Sheet™ by Paul English

See also print and alphabetic versions; more information and other countries.

--- -finance ----------- -----phone steps to find a human
American Express ------ -- 800-528-4800 dial 0 repeatedly

ATT Universal Rewards ---800-950-5114 ###

Capital One Visa -----------800-867-0904 ignore prompts and invalid entry warnings; press #0 four times

It has vertually every place of business you can think of on it. If you want to have a look at his real cheat sheet you can find it here: http://paulenglish.com/ivr/ or you can also find it through the today show web site and get the full story at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032633?ta=y

We the customer deserves more, then a cold, impersonal and inadiquet response to our questions. This is not just happening with utility companys it's happening with some banks, brokers, etc. it's spreading everywhere. We made these companys rich and now they don't want to bother with us but they certainly do not mind increasing our charges.