Automated Phone Services

Am I the only one who gets frustrated with those automated phone services?

The other day I had to put money on my pay as you go phone… something that should take just a couple minutes took 30 minutes to do.  Of course there is no actual human to speak to and once you get stuck in the loop you can’t get out.  I hung up and tried from the beginning and still couldn’t get to where I wanted to be.  At least with this service I can somewhat understand the options which is my problem for most of these automated services.  Maybe it is just me but after 3 or 4 different options I forget what I was even calling to do… and of course the list never states exactly what you are looking for, instead, you have to figure out exactly what category it would be in… for me it always seems like what I am calling for can fit into multiple categories and it is horrible if you pick the wrong category and end up with more menus.

How do you get out of this cycle?

I personally have had some success in yelling really loud in the phone… then I finally get a live human person but some services must not have any live human people available.  So then what are you suppose to do?

What is worse are those automated services where you have to speak and can’t type in your answers… seriously? do any of those really work?  I think I speak clearly and I can never get them to recognize what I am saying… what happens to people who have speech issues?

Should it be mandatory for all automated services to have a live human operator available by pushing ‘0’ at any time during your call?

What kinds of accessibility has been lost since technology has taken out live human workers?