OMG, calling AT&T & cursing out the menu.....it understood what I said! LMAO!!

A fried of mine is having terrible phone problems -- only way he could let me know was by email. I called AT&T for him (we have no choice here -- we're in a rural area and it's the only phone company available) and got the usual automated crap. When it was clear that I was reporting a technical issue, it tried to take me through automated steps to fix it. I started hitting "operator" as I usually do to get an actual human being. The message changed to something like how may we help you......(it was continuing and I talked over it)....."you can give me a fucking human being," says I as I usually do. This time it responded, "you'd like to speak with a live customer service representative,?" OMG, I never laughed at one of those things before! Guess they're having to train the things to recognize "fucking human being." LOL

http://gethuman.com/gethuman_list.asp

Your option wasn't listed there, but glad it worked for you!

Kudos to you.

a real person.
it's a great one to bookmark and use.

ETA: Meant this as a reply to post 7.

I also received the response

"you'd like to speak with a live customer service representative,?"

when I yelled for a human.

it hasn't recognized it. When I modified it to human it has. Who knows -- it just cracked me up.

over and over again; most of the time it works.

Their system is not nearly as smart as Time Warner Cable in Charlotte is. I call that system my "girlfriend." It's the only bill I actually look forward to paying every month. I love her voice and she doesn't sound automated at all. She even understands me when I mumble. Best of all: I know her phone number and she always sounds happy to hear from me. :P

...you have to pay her for the courtesy. I think there's a name for that..... :P :P :P

I can call her and just check on my account sometimes. I wish she worked for the bank too. :P

I tried to call an insurance company to handle something for a client last week. I spend 90 minutes on the phone, had two dropped calls, and never did get to talk to a person, just menu after menu.

after all, they are listening to EVERYTHING you say.

Actually the machine is probably responding to sound that doesn't 'make sense' to it. If it doesn't get a response to it's query but still gets a response it's programmed to ask the question about talking to a human being. It's been years too late but they finally got it.

It won't be long before they program it to be sympathetic and/or funny. And in a few years we'll probably prefer to talk to a machine since we'll be living in Idiocracy

but the canned email I get from chainlove.com when my order ships starts out "Holy crap. Your stuff just shipped."

And in case anyone is wondering, chainlove.com is an offshoot of steepandcheap.com but it's just for bike stuff. Not quite as much fun as the name sounds. ;)

then they send me to a live person because they don't know what I'm saying.

they are one day.

Whoopi said she took off to wait for a repairman and they never came. When she called to find out why they told her the person did come, that her residence was a red building. She doesn't live in any such building. They did this to her twice.

What is startling about this story is that a friend of mine told me the same story two motnhs before I heard it from the View. They also told my friend who waited for a repairman that they had been out but they said that she lived in some other colored building. Last winter, I was without a phone for about two weeks while they promised to come out. They didn't. They also added charges to my bill that I didn't know about and then gave me the runaround when I tried to get them taken off the bill.

I wish I had a choice for other phone service.

It has canned responses, but if none of them match, then they direct you to a live person. It probably didn't understand what you said, so it used it's default response, which is to direct you to an actual person.