GeekLimit

How to get around talking to the machine when calling a company

Posted by The Technocrat | Filed under Geeky

For those of you who don’t like talking to a machine, there is a great site here that has ways to immediately get a hold of a real person.

Of course, the real gamble here is if you’ll be connected to someone in India who will understand you even less than the machine.

Here’s a helpful tip: find the places you do business with, and enter their number AND the shortcut keys into your cell phone. Most cell phones will pause by using a comma or the letter ‘p’.

For example, if you would put this in your phone, you would have a way of reaching a human being at Washington Mutual, enter this in as the number in your address book:

18007568000,,,,0,0 (or possibly 18007568000pppp0p0

(each one of the commas or ‘p’ characters will pause for a specified amount of time. What character and how much time depends on your phone.

This will dial the number for Washington Mutual, wait 4-8 seconds (depending on your phone), dial 0, wait 1-2 seconds (depending on your phone) and dial 0 again.

If the phone system hasn’t changed, you will be connected to a person, without having to look at your phone (or take your eyes off of the road).

Comments (0) | December 6th, 2005