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Nothing whatsoever to do with homeschool, but...

People who are close to me know that I would rather chew glass than navigate through a phone maze just to finally talk to a human.

Of course, we've all been subjected to such time-wasting ordeals as being forced fed our credit card balance and last payment details when, in fact, all we really wanted was to ask someone to please (oh pretty please) stop risking our credit and identity by sending those balance transfer checks in the mail (where they can be pilfered by just about anyone blessed with owning a hand).

Recently I experienced the frustration of trying to explain to a voice-automaton at United Air that I wanted to change an existing flight reservation. After about 30 minutes of failure, and several do-over calls, I discovered the magic word was Agent, which prompted the robot to pass me over to a human. Ok, not rocket science—I should have figured that out sooner, but I was too busy chewing glass.

Certainly we all have our own war stories,
but the good news is there's actually a solution!!

Compliments of a generous fellow by the name of Paul English (who this month is my hero) I present to you what I call the phone-maze cheat sheet! Paul calls it the IVR Cheat Sheet (whatever!).

By any name, it's the fastest phone-route to a human at (currently) 213 of the most popular (and obsessively over-automated) companies on earth (YES!).

The list below appears in a frameset and is being pulled directly (live, in real time) from the GetHuman.com site at: http://gethuman.com/us/. That way, as Paul updates the info (which he claims to do weekly) the information stays current. Of course, you can use the link above to go directly to Paul's site, and I encourage you to do so. Either way, though, you get the same info.

Go ahead, think of your favorite phone-maze-to-hate and then use the box below to scroll down to the company that most drives you nuts. Chances are, you'll see the shortcut-to-a-human that you wished you had the last time you were faced with inane choices put forth by a way-too-artificially-cheerful automaton.

Of course, we haven't tried them all yet, but the ones we've used so far all WORK! ...and, that means I'm picking a lot less glass outta my teeth these days.

Impatiently but lovingly yours,



Stephen Mahaney – SearchEngineNews.com