Can you hum a few bars of what you're hearing so I can determine whether or not that's the stuff that gets under my skin?

Forget the bad music because it is preferable to the voicemail select an option diatribe that goes on for days. Try calling Verizon and see how long and how many "select an option&quot s) it takes to get a person. Hint: Forever!

I think it's meant to make people hang up.

...messages that are interrupted every 20-30 seconds by a voice telling you how important your call is, and that someone will be with you shortly. By the time you have heard that message 20 times, it only emphasize ss how long you've been on hold. Just play the music.

Analogue phone service was fairly faithful for a limited audio band. So the music at least sounded okay. Digital phone service and especially cell phone service samples the audio in 4 to 8 bit sections which are time slotted with other conversation. These slots are then reconstituted into an analogue signal. That works Okay for speech but is abysmal for music.

It is ironic that music on hold was rare in the analogue phone days has become ubiquitous in the digital age.

When their tech support was out of Ireland. They had fantastic Celtic music It was disappointing when they moved tech support to Utah.