I truly dislike telephone calls. It’s ironic, given that I had a long career in telecommunications starting at the time when telecom == telephone. Worse, supposedly my maternal great-great… grandfather was Alexander Graham Bell. Still, I have a horrible time understanding people on the phone and they seem to have difficulty understanding me. It’s a real struggle. To make matters worse, when I was in medicine there were always insurance company representatives and lawyers who insisted on phone calls. Invariably, it was because they wanted to make unlawful threats or make promises they never intended to keep. I have been lied to via telephone far more than any other venue, even though I avoid phones like the plague. That’s why two-party consent states like California baffle me: why create a safe space for bullies to lie and threaten where they can be assured that the law will prevent their victims from making recordings that would hold them accountable for their evil?
I will go to lengths before I resort to the telephone to resolve a problem. That’s why, by the time I call a company, I have already exhausted all other options available to me by scouring the web site, trying email (if available), and even trying to use online chat (even though I know that these days you’re mostly connected to artificially unintelligent bots). Which is why, when I call a company and have to hear over and over and over again, while waiting on hold, that “you can save time by visiting our web site at www.devilspawnjavascript.com” I become annoyed. Sorry, but when my son was nine years old, he was creating better and more useful web sites than yours and if your web site was worth anything at all, I wouldn’t be making this call in the first place.
—2p