Hi folks. Have you called a doctor or customer service for a credit card and greeted by a live person. I doubt it. Instead you are greeted by the dreaded automated phone menu. Recently I called our son’s ENT doctor. All I wanted to do was cancel an existing appointment. I had to go through seven different menus to get to a live person. My actual conversation with her took a few seconds, but to get to her, I spent several minutes negotiating the menu. Sometimes you get so many choices that you forget if you wanted option 1 or option 5. Well they have a solution for that: to repeat the menu, press *. Many times, what I do is keep pressing 0 until the system says “I will transfer you to a representative”. Another annoying thing is regardless of the time of the day or night you call, you still get “All our representatives are currently busy assisting other callers. Your call will be answered in the order it was received”. I honestly think that the customer service people are sitting there drinking coffee or soda or playing video games on their phone. The other annoying part is when the person you get cannot answer your question and they say they will transfer you. Again you get a different set of menus. There have been times when I have gotten “We are experiencing unusually high call volume, please leave a message and we will get back to you”. I realize that hiring people is expensive and that automated menus can efficiently (?) route your call to the right person/department. Some companies discourage phone calls. When you call they direct you to a website and you have to fill out a form. I have noticed that this process takes longer and usually your question is not answered completely. In our case, our kids’ pediatrician is really good. You do get an automated menu, but within seconds you select an option and speak to a live person.