They should call it "Boys Wreck Ignition"

By Alfred Ingram

Remember when ‘touch tone terror’ first entered our lives?

In all innocence we called a bank, or a pharmacy, or, most likely, the dtmf (dual tone multi frequency)-ing phone company itself, got a menu of choices too long to remember, started over and became even more confused the second time around.

Remember finally giving up in total frustration, perhaps even paying a charge we just knew was wrong?

Well they've fouled it up beyond all “wreck ignition,” again.

SBC has managed to do the barely possible, crossbreed help desk hell with touch tone hell, add a not ready for public technical capability, and give birth to voice recognition that has a hard time recognizing standard english.

Anyway, that's what I discovered when I had both a dead router and a bad DSL line and had to contact SBCYahoo for service at my State Representative's office.

Of course, now that I, along with the rest of the industrializedworld, am used to punching the keypad for menu selections, I wasn't able to do so.

The first day a total waste because SBC couldn't identify the state representative as a DSL customer. I'd say the number of the phone I was calling from (whatever happened to caller id?) and the machine consistently read back a number I'd never given it, finally driving me to hang up to try again the next day.

On day two I decided to call on from the half of the line (DSL splits a standard line) that wasn't hooked to the router and wound up talking to someone with an Indian accent who “insisted” that his name was “Matt.” That's when I discovered that I had a bad router, a bad line, and a help desk on another continent. After checking the line “Matt” told me they'd known of the problem for a week, but, apparently, doing anything about it called for someone on this side of the planet.

“Matt” arranged for SBC to call the next day at eleven, (so somone here in the United States could analyse the problem) so of course no one called. When I called to find out why, they claimed to be waiting for my call. “Matt” from India was not available to verify or deny either side of this foul up.…

more coming soon…