You know how it is. You telephone some organisation, go through the "If you are 'phoning about such and such, press one", routine and finally get in a queue and wait to speak to a human being. And as you wait, you hear music playing. And the music that plays is - 90% of the time - annoying right from the beginning. And it becomes more annoying as the waiting continues.
Is it just me? I find most of the music they play incredibly irritating. In fact, when I am waiting, I put the telephone down, or hold it away from my ear, so that I don't have to listen to it. (I dislike it that much.) It means that when a human being finally takes my call, I miss the first sentence or so that he or she says, but that is a small price to pay.
Am I the only one?
And why do they have to make you listen to the stuff? What's wrong with silence?
I suppose that when the human being comes on the line, my first words should be "I'm sorry, but I missed that because I was holding the telephone away from my ear in order to avoid having to listen to the annoying music. Could you repeat what you said?"
Note: Thread inspired by my dealings with my (otherwise excellent) insurance company who made me listen ad infinitum to this: tinyurl.com/6acy757
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The music provides reassurance to the caller that he is still connected.
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It depends what the music is. A few weeks back I was kept waiting with the music from New Order and the Cure which I thought was quite unusual. Blue Monday sounds awful on such lowfi though.
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I notice these days some companies use a beep every few seconds rather than lift musak, of course just to add insult to in jury you're sometimes paying for the pleasure of listening to the stuff.
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>> Blue
>> Monday sounds awful on such lowfi though.
Appropriate lyrics though.
'Now I stand here waiting'
:)
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I never thought about :).
I am still waiting to here the Smiths "heaven knows I am miserable now" or Blondie's "hanging on the telephone" I think if I was setting up such a system I would choose both of them songs.
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The Smiths -heaven knows I'm miserable now.
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At least that dreadfully cheerful Four Seasons (Vivaldi not the Frankie Valley one) has become less popular...
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>> At least that dreadfully cheerful Four Seasons (Vivaldi not the Frankie Valley one) has become
>> less popular...
Vivaldi was commissioned to write it by Venetian Telecom, that's why it's used a lot. :-)
It ruined it for me years ago. Now, Glazounov's Four Seasons...that's different.
Lots of classics spoilt by use in adverts as well.
Ted
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i find its always telephone numbers where they rip you a higher price are the biggest players of rubbish music, pips, your call is important to us and for training purposes we are recording you
i can just imagine the reincarnation of reggie perrin on the other end going
one two three four
make them wait by the door
five six seven eight we like to make you miserable lot wai
nine ten ......................come
or in this case.good afternoon my name is mindy how can i not help today?
and at the end of the sorry computer says no syndrome
have a nice day is there anything i can help with? as the supervisor is watching me
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One large national organisation used to use Sexual Healing with the final line of
Please don't procrastinate
It's not good to masturbate
It put you in a pretty good frame of mind by the time you finally got through!
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>>Blue Monday sounds awful on such lowfi though.
>>
Try to find New Order singing it live on TOTP... terrible!
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I have seen the footage several times. Apparantly it dropped of the charts after that appearence. Barny is not a great singer but New Order isnsited on doing it life but TOTPs didn't have the experience in recording it so you got an awful recording with an awful singing voice.
I have seen New Order live and it is far far better than that clip.
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Back in the 90s I was dealing with Telewest on Merseyside for education related work. They had some awful musak so I complained and they changed it. Maybe we should complain more ;-)
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Spike Milligan used to wait for people to answer, then would sing to THEM for 2 minutes, and see how they liked it...
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Virgin Mobile is annoying (son's phone with them) because the music is sooo loud!
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Treat yourself to the wonderful album "On Hold Music" No need to wait for those phone calls.
www.royaltyfreetunes.co.uk/Albums/onholdmusicvol1.htm
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Just thought of another song I would use, Europe - The Final Countdown.
I would want choose ironic songs which would make the listener laugh at the cheek of using it.
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I can just about cope with the music, what really gets me is the idiotic highly strung twerp that tells me all the services/goods i can buy from said company whilst waiting...
yes i know that you sell X,Y and Z, but seeing as you've put me throught the hell of having to listen to that sales patter there's not a chance that i'll risk dealing with you again.
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>> The music provides reassurance to the caller that he is still connected.
>>
>>
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Yeah, right. The same as "Your call is important to us" provides reassurance that your call is important to them?
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...Yeah, right. The same as "Your call is important to us" provides reassurance that your call is important to them?...
No not the same at all.
The first is a simple fact, there is music, therefore I am still on hold.
The second is a largely meaningless statement, as your sarcastic tone suggests.
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There's one company I used to deal with (think it was Sage UK) that used to have a menu system, and if they put you on hold there were menu options for jazz, classical, or "their choice" hold music, thus neatly encompassing two telephone hates (menus & hold music) in one!
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Every two rings, there's the silly trollop that comes on with 'Your call is important to us, etc '.
No it isn't, you're just hoping I'll ring off, luv !
Ted
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>> Every two rings, there's the silly trollop that comes on with 'Your call is important to us, etc '.
>>No it isn't, you're just hoping I'll ring off, luv !
>>
You are at least making progress :-(
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Orange has a general number for eveything - dial 150 on my Orange phone.
Fantastic!!! but it is not a lot of use when the local cell is dead ( frequently).
Is there an 0800 number of course not. I have to pay to moan and wait and listen and moan .
" Type in your Mobile number" and listen to to muzak. " Charlie here ( in India ) etc.
" What is your number ?" "Oh that would be the same as I have already typed in ! "
" If you had a decent script you would have asked what the problem is . You do not need my number but you do need my post code" followed by silence as we have gone off the defined script.
I notice that "contact us " which means fill in the boxes for an email has also been designed by another customer friendly desk bound wotsit. I have yet to find one of these email complaints systems that offers you " would you like an automated copy of your email?)
Oh no that would leave an audit trail to beat them with.
/rant over
To be fair the BBC has acted promptly and implemented corrections and typos that I have pointed out to them re their website.
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I read sometime ago on moneysavingexpert.com that if you dialled 0 at the first option as soon as it started, it got you answered by a real live person.
I don't know if it works, but I'm sure someone on here will have tried it?
Pat
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i always push hash or * to do this but on sites like dvla it just locks you out and starts its expensive spiel rubbish all over again
however it does work quite often but dont tell everyone
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The menus have now moved on from key pushing and into voice recognition (or sometimes non recognition). London Midland tried it for a while until customers pointed out that lots of their calls were from people on trains where the extraneous noises sent the damn thing off to default - ticket sales in Bangalore. NBG when you're complaining about being on a stuck train with a guard who's not coping.
DSG group also have it on their customer service line. It coped with my corncrake tone and Yorkshire vowels long enough to understand 'Laptop' & 'Toshiba' but 25th January was too hard.... At this point miss auto-mated adopts a patronising tone and'says alright lets try another way.
GRRRRRRRRRR
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Sat 29 Jan 11 at 11:56
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Cineworld have/had this irritating feature as well.
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>> The menus have now moved on from key pushing and into voice recognition (or sometimes
>> non recognition).
A pain at the best of times I find, but a REAL pain if you're trying to ring from the office.
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>> I read sometime ago on moneysavingexpert.com that if you dialled 0 at the first option
>> as soon as it started, it got you answered by a real live person.
>> I don't know if it works, but I'm sure someone on here will have tried
>> it?
>>
Have found that if you stab 0 about 6 times, it generally gets through not only to a live person, but a reasonably intelligent and helpful one :-)
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When some debt collecting agency tried to get me to contact them through a hideously expensive number (to explain to them that I wasn't the guy they were after) - I found a geographic number on the web for them, phoning this took me straight to their admin department...useful.
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Yes, there's that 'say no 08.. numbers' site, but quite a few of the landline numbers it gives are out of date or disconnected.
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they should pay their bills on time like the rest of us have to
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I do but my predecessor at the address didn't.
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I eventually solved it through finding details of the Company Secretary from Companies House - a phone call to his home one evening sorted my problem......"how did you get this number ?" Directory Enquiries duhh !!
Last edited by: Pugugly on Sat 29 Jan 11 at 14:29
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talking directory enquiries as we wernt
who in the real world apart from waynetta slob and companies pay for directory enquiries these days anyway?
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I don't BT web is your friend.
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Wahahahah! Well dug Pug!
A local moron managed to get my details, so i was constantly spammed and cold-called.
Did the reserach, fopund HIS details. Called him at home and asked him to stop.
He got stroppy.
I told him I'd call him next week.
In the meantime, he got LOTS of calls for puppies for sale, cheap BMW (owner emigrating) rentboy services etc etc etc.
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Telephone waiting music - is it just me? - Iffy
