Lifehacker has a great post on Top Ten Telephone Tricks
I especially like #1 Trick automated phone bots into thinking your line’s dead. and #4. Skip the greeting and get right to the beep with one keypress. ADHD adults are known for many things but patience in the face of inefficient, irritating voicemail loops from hell isn’t one of them.
There’s a special place in hell waiting for the person(s) who invented voicemail menus that often leave you trapped in voicemail hell. One of the worst I remember was Hewlett Packard where you spent several minutes going from one voicemail option to another for what seemed to be like an eternity only to have them hang up on you at the end.
“We appreciate your call” translated into real language often means we have such contempt for our customers, and have such excessive greed that we can’t be bothered to hire live humans to talk to you.
Phone bots, spam bots, what’s the common denominator?