Unreachable humans
I don’t mean in the psychological sense, I mean in the practical sense.
Over time, answering machines have made it nearly impossible to call a medical office and reach a human being. I’ve just spent a fair amount of time calling such offices and listening to recorded messages about how eager they are to serve you and get your calls, how important you are to them, and then a long list of things you might want or people you might desire to reach – always with the most unlikely ones first, and a warning about what to do if this is an emergency call. Then on hold with some usually dreadful music, then another chipper voice with a recorded message, this time saying you must state your name, birthday, phone number, reason for calling, and they’ll be oh so pleased to get back to you some time.
You know the drill.
I sometimes screen calls when I’m busy, or when it’s someone I don’t want to talk to. But some people never answer their phones, ever. And some don’t talk on the phone anymore at all. That’s their prerogative, of course. But I think it’s somewhat ironic that an invention that at first seemed to facilitate communication has ended up doing no such thing.
One of these phone calls of mine today involved a “breach” of one of the medical offices I attend, and the loss of some information about when I had a certain test and when I might be due for the next one. Apparently there’s a staff member whose sole job it has been to deal with the consequences of this breach, which happened several months ago. Breaches like that could only happen once medical records became computerized. It’s one of the reasons I never give my Social Security number in any medical office. They don’t all ask for it, but some of them still do.
Just now, the phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number and I thought maybe it was one of the offices calling back. No such luck. It was some group asking for money – a recorded message. I hung up.
My favorite version of this is when you go through some phone tree with like 10 options but none of them really fit your issue so you choose one you think is closest then eventually leads to real person who then informs you they need to transfer you to some other person which about half the time leads to you being disconnected.
Insurance providers are the worst at this but doctor’s offices are bad also.
It is almost impossible to talk to a real person at my doctor’s office.
When I was still in practice, my office phone manners were very important to me. First, as a surgeon, many calls were possibly “big ticket” items. Pediatricians are the worst because so many calls are for minor questions. Anyway, I had a practice of never calling my “back line.” I called my listed number and my staff knew that any new call could be me, not a patient. It did wonders for phone manners. Also, I never had one of those recorded messages about “If this is an emergency…,”
Those, of course, were pre-Obamacare days.
What’s your phone number? I’ll call you up.
I see a couple of doctors at a large group practice. They recently introduced a text message system. You enter your question or need on a form on their website, along with your cell number. They send a text within a short time, and I can easily schedule appointments, ask to have test results sent, or ask for lab results. It works very well, much better than waiting on the phone.
On my iPhone, I enable the option which silences calls from numbers not in my directory. The phone won’t ring, and people who really want to reach me can leave a voicemail.
https://davidgriffey.blogspot.com/2022/01/what-our-doctors-office-said.html
Mr.Griffey’s tale of dealing with doctors in our time. Mr. Griffey lives in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio.
One of the most annoying things is when the automated system asks all sorts of information from you (date of birth, last 4 digits of this or that, etc.), the long list of options for what you are calling about, and then after getting put on hold, the person who finally answers asks the same damn questions.
}}} It was some group asking for money – a recorded message. I hung up.
One of the tricks here is to answer the phone, say, “Hello?” count to about 2 or 3, then hang up if no one responds immediately (with practice, you’ll get this timing down pretty quick)
If it’s a person and not a bill collector or sales call, they will generally call back.
But if there is a delay in response, it’s usually a sign of a multidialer — a device that calls multiple lines at once looking for one to answer. Which is almost always a guaranteed sales call, if not a robot.
I may be wrong, but I believe it’s illegal for them to call you right back… hence differentiating between legit callers and time-wasting assholes.
Note, not claiming this is always the way to go, but it’s a good way to bet. And as far as I am concerned, if you’re using a robodialer, you can go eph yourself with a sharp pointy stick. We are talking “Bougainvillea” branches.
The other fun, if you don’t mind tying up the phone, is to answer as above, then just set the phone down and walk away. With any luck, the robot will give a sales spiel, then hand off to a human, thus wasting not only the robot’s time (which does exist, any bot can only handle so many calls at a time) but any human associated with it, too.
I’ve had “all the above” experiences like everyone else. A pleasant surprise has been our relationship with our builder for our house. Generally, we try to communicate via email. First, that gives a record of our communication. Second, we know we’re not their only client. The nice surprise is that they will often just call us in response to an email. They say it’s much easier to just have a conversation than email exchanges.
It’s a small, family builder..basically two brothers. But we are really liking the personal interaction. And, the house is moving right along with high quality work.
Most of the time when our phone rings the name and no. will come up on our TV if we are watching. I tell my wife not to answer the phone unless she knows the person calling. If it something important they will call back. I agree with all the comments above. I would say more but I have been admonished by my better half to be more polite in society and not yell and scream so much.
Some time around the start of the covid pandemic, the local pharmacy my wife uses began to ignore calls. It has continued to this day. Dear wife finds it literally impossible to talk to a real human working at the pharmacy.
(She often finds it useful, even necessary, to ascertain that the prescription med is really ready for pickup, because it’s often /not/ ready in spite of text messages and telephone alerts claiming the opposite.)
Anyway, there she was, waiting in line to pick up a prescription med, and she got the idea to call the pharmacy, while she was there in line, just as an experiment. Listening on her cell phone, it rang and rang, but in the pharmacy, there was no sound of what might be a telephone.
At the front of the line now, she mentioned the telephone situation to the worker on duty. He earnestly explained that sometimes it’s not possible to answer every call. She earnestly explained in return that she’s calling the pharmacy /right now/, and there’s no telephone ringing/buzzing/whatever.
The worker offered no response.
Almost a decade ago we moved to another part of the country from where we had lived for almost 20 years and, to this day, my wife and I both get quite a number of calls from people we don’t know that originate from our old area code.
Many of these calls are pretty likely to be scams, but I also suspect that a lot of these calls are likely “cold calls” from people–scammers or not–who are paid by the call, and who are just given a call list of potential customers for whatever product or service–lists that are just never updated.
I’ve seen it said that if you actually answer such a scam call they can record you saying, for instance, the word “yes,” and then use your recorded “yes” as you giving the assent needed by another website to purchase some good or service, something of value.
With my sense of humor, I like the ideas I have seen proposed–of answering such annoying calls from unknown people by identifying yourself by saying something like “city morgue,” or “crime scene cleanup services,” by babbling in some unknown tongue, or by talking as if you have called them, rather than them calling you.
Mike K.,
Very good of you and a clever way to keep your staff on their toes.
The worker offered no response.
See if you can find a state agency which takes consumer complaints and make one. You might also complain to the parent company. It’s not as if pharmacy employees are overworked.
Art Deco (7:55 pm), admittedly, at very busy times, yes, pharmacy employees can be overworked. But in fact they /never/ answer the phone, and I say that after literally years now of experience, including busy times, not-so-busy times, and everything in between.
They /do not/ answer the telephone. I certainly do credit your suggestion of complaining, but I’m too old for that.
(For me, I use an alternate service for my needs. Dear wife does what she does; they’re convenient and we work around their foibles — better for the blood pressure.)
A little off topic, but for unrecognized numbers, I:
1. Do not answer.
2. Check to see if a voicemail was left.
3. If so, and I still don’t know who exactly is calling (could be a scam), I google the number (could also add the word “scam”) to see if any information comes up. About half the time it will be reported as a scam.
4. If I still don’t know whether it is legit, I Block the number on my phone (iPhone). (Google how to do that if you don’t know how.) I also delete the call.
5. I have been doing this for quite a while, and get the occasional scam, but not very often.
6. There are spam-blocking services you can sign up for, but so far I’ve been doing it myself.
I wish my doctor would call his front desk to keep his staff on their toes.
I have also had most of the experiences described above.
“Chats” with programmed software also go in circles and get you nowhere.
Currently I am also exasperated with my doctor’s online “portal”, which is pretty much as unresponsive as his phone. That may be the fault of his staff for ignoring my written requests (which are few). But “whyever”, it is extremely frustrating.
MY new phone has a “Block” button, and it identifies questionable numbers with a SPAM? prefix. If there is no caller ID, or the SPAM notification, or I don’t recognize the ID, it gets the ‘Block’ treatment. Come at me Bro, I can block thousands of numbers.
And have we all noticed that every-single-day-of-the-year-including-leap-year is a safe bet for …we are receiving unusually heavy call volumes, today”? Yes, it is. Voice menu systems are a special, perfidious form of purgatory-on-earth.
But: Before you get on the line to the bigger organizations, try this:
https://gethuman.com/
I’d guess that about 98 % of the calls I get are from people trying to sell me something.
Of the remaining 2 %, roughly half are for the person who had this phone number before I did, because she didn’t tell all of her contacts that she had a new number.
Aggie:
It always kind of amuses me – but in a rather bleak way – when I get that message about heavy call volume and long wait times and then about 15 seconds later someone answers. That happens every now and then.
neo,
The flip side of that is when they say ‘estimated wait time 2 minutes’ and then they say it again in 2 minutes and then again and again and before you know you’ve been on hold for 20 minutes.
I have two phones: one – the primary – has the iPhone “no ring if not in the call list” turned on, the other – the secondary – does not.
Neither has voice mail, so if they ring through the caller gets “no voice mail availble” message. Both phones will display the number in the “missed calls list” from which I may choose, at my discretion, to return the call.
The primary number is given out very judiciously, only to those people with whom I need, or want, to talk with – the alarm company, doctor’s offices, neighbors, relatives, etc. The secondary will ring no matter who calls so that’s the “public number” which I will give out to lesser folk. If I have to contact someone, a business, say, I use the “public” phone for two reasons: first, the “private” phone does not reveal its number when calling and an increasing number of automated phone systems refuse to connect with it (just as some web sites refuse connection from VPNs, and that’s a specific hint), and second, if I turn that feature off it guarantees that I will begin receiving unwanted calls from whomever, or whatever, I have called.
Quite often after I have left the house I discover that I have forgotten my “public” phone and have only my “private” phone, despite them sitting side-by-side on the table near the door. It’s almost like 1980 again, where one traveled through portions of one’s day incommunicado.
Imagine that.
My procedures do upset some, the public’s attitude has been converted to one in which everyone, everywhere is supposed to be reachable at any time; I view that as a form of mental illness and refuse to play.
The two phone thing is easy for me because for so many years I always carried two phones: an issued phone, on which personal business and discussion was never, ever conducted regardless of the urgency or convenience, and a personal phone which I paid for on which no agency business was ever conducted regardless of the urgency or convenience, nor was the number of my personal phone ever provided to the employer or any fellow employees who might contact me on it. Establishing that granite-hard rule was my choice, driven by the content of certain state statutes and advice procured from learned counsel.
Pro Tip: Victoria Taft, at PJMedia, mentioned in a March 2 piece that she had learned something unexpected from the Alex Murdaugh trial – the value, and importance, of Faraday bags in this day and age, and technical aspects of the why. She”s quite late to the game, but the message is the same: It is your life, you own it, treat it that way. (FYI, a 2-pack of bags on Amazon is under $20.)
If I still don’t know whether it is legit, I Block the number on my phone
A lot of those calls vary the number that shows up. Fortunately there’s a free app for the iPhone that allows blocking with “wildcards.” Usually it’s the last four digits that change with each call. I just put it on my phone a week ago and it seems to be working.
When I was a senior in college, I started working part-time for a business services company. This was in 1971–no cell phones, no voice mail, no Internet or email; just land lines–and for some businesses, answering machines using tapes, and answering services. My boss used an answering service, and he told me why–nobody wants to talk to a machine. I had my own businesses from 1975 until I retired a couple of years ago, and I think these modern computerized answering systems are the dumbest thing American businesses have ever done! It is not good customer service; it irritates people right from the start. I have also noticed over the last thirty years or so a major decline in the quality of customer service, across many companies and fields.
RE: not providing one’s Social Security number to medical offices, I had a really unpleasant encounter around 2007 concerning this issue. Took our teenaged daughter to a dermatologist to get a skin tag on her neck removed. It was getting painful because clothing around her neckline rubbed and irritated it. The tag was a little thing; nothing unusual, and the doctor removed it in like two seconds. They had a policy of sending any tissue removed from a patient into a lab for further examination. Fine, but the office personnel said they would need to have her Soc # in order to submit the skin tag to the lab. I told them (nicely of course; that’s how I roll) that I had a policy against releasing a Soc# to any entity except a government agency that had a legit claim to demand it.
They were NOT happy about this. They told me that the lab required a Soc# in order to have an ironclad way to identify each sample to the right person. Maybe so but there are other ways to correctly connect an individual to his sample, and I wanted to preserve privacy and to reduce the chances of identity theft by always resisting giving out a Soc#.
It was surreal; they were clearly angry with me (not appropriate) and it was especially unpleasant because they also looked at me as though I was wearing a tin foil hat. IIRC they did end up submitting the tissue without getting our daughter’s Soc#, and the lab reported nothing abnormal.
MJR said: “Dear wife finds it literally impossible to talk to a real human working at the pharmacy.
(She often finds it useful, even necessary, to ascertain that the prescription med is really ready for pickup, because it’s often /not/ ready in spite of text messages and telephone alerts claiming the opposite.)”
I saw a hilarious bit where the texts from CVS pharmacy became more and more strident until the final text alerts that the pharmacy tech is going to commit sepuku in the parking lot if you don’t pick up your prescription before 7pm EST.
Griffin: “My favorite version of this is when you go through some phone tree with like 10 options but none of them really fit your issue so you choose one you think is closest then eventually leads to real person who then informs you they need to transfer you to some other person which about half the time leads to you being disconnected.” EXACTLY my experience 99% of the time. I treasure the few vendors who don’t do it.
Jimmy: “One of the most annoying things is when the automated system asks all sorts of information from you (date of birth, last 4 digits of this or that, etc.), the long list of options for what you are calling about, and then after getting put on hold, the person who finally answers asks the same damn questions.” Ditto.
In both situations, it’s so routine that I assume it’s a deliberate attempt to exhaust people into hanging up.
And then there’s “waiting times will be lengthier than usual because of these unusual times,” an apparent reference to the lockdowns, and something they have no plan to alter during my lifetime.
My concierge doctor, in contrast, gives me his cell number and will answer even when he’s on vacation. I pay through the nose for this, and it’s worth every penny.