Don't make me talk to your chatbot

It's petty, but I haven't found a better disincentive.

Apparently my mobile provider switched to a voice chatbot only phone system in September. I called them today because of a price increase and some weird long distance charges on my bill.

I call, the chatbot answers, I confirm my account info and enter my PIN then ask it “why did my price go up”, “your price went up because we made a change to your account”. Wow, super. I ask it if it can reduce the price, no. I ask it about the long distance charges and it tells me to check my account statement online. I ask to be transferred to an human and it asks why, but it does transfer me over to their callback system. As a first line of support defence, that wasn’t so bad.

The timing of the transfer is off so I only hear half of what the callback system says. It requires me to verify the number I want to be called back on, then I tells me I can type in a time I want the callback. I think to myself, is this 24 hour time, how does AM/PM work, what time-slots are available, how do those work?

While I’m thinking about all of this it repeats the instructions. I type in 1 minute into the future because I don’t want to waste my own time waiting, just please call me back ASAP. “That time was unavailable”. I guess that makes sense, it’s very soon and maybe slots are on 5 minute windows. I have to confirm my phone number again and I can enter a new time. I try 10 minutes from now, that’s on a clean 5 minute boundary. Nope. Confirm again and try the nearest 15 minute boundary. Nope — and this time it hangs up and I have to call back and start from zero.

I call back and explain to the bot (again) that I need to talk a human, it’s a billing issue, thanks. It fails to understand me and that seems to get it stuck in a loop. After two more turns it asking me to repeat myself I hang up and call back again. This time the bot does understands me and I try 3 more callback times for today, all of which fail, and it hangs up.

I’ve just spent 10 minutes talking to a wall and punching in numbers. The phone wall is clearly unassailable — all paths lead to the broken callback subsystem.

I try the text chat bot on the site. I convince it to put me in contact with a human chat operator, who I then have to convince it’s worth it for them to call me because he couldn’t help me and it took over 1 minute per chat turn/iteration.

Finally a human calls me! Before we can talk I need to open a text, click the link, then enter the code she tells me, then enter my account PIN. It felt like I might be getting phished, this required such a weird chain of info. She tells me they put a notice of the price increase in my December bill (which was the right amount, so I didn’t read it), so this is all above board. She says if I want a cheaper plan I should check the app and she won’t even tell me what the options are. I ask if they’ll price match competitors and she says no.

At this point I told her I was considering leaving if they won’t price match (and also that the new support service was very bad). She says she’s sorry to hear that, to check the app, then pauses and asks me if I’m happy with my internet services, as if anything about our interaction says “please sign me up with more services!” I know they have to ask about the upsell because they always do, but wow.

The entire reason I’ve been a customer so long was that for a decade I would call and within 5 minutes be able to update my account to a new plan. Usually the support staff were nice and could offer me some loyalty discount, and I was happy.

I just (as in just) finished cancelling my entire account, then checked HN, and “Don’t make me talk to your chatbot” is the top article. Serendipity at its finest.

I see it in a reddit post, or a twitter comment, I've suspected it in text messages. And like that angle, the like "you're a human. can you please, just" and feeling a little out there for pouring my soul into every word I right wherever it is, like, that idea resonates. That frustration to be reading a lengthy blurb in what's become an over-saturated style where I have to work even harder to discern their real meaning than if they were actually that verbose to begin with.