SayNoTo1890.com

I found an interesting link from the Consumerist (Shoppers Bite Back) which linked to this article from VOIP-News - PBX Hell: 50-Plus Hacks and Tips to Get to a Real Person at Any Corporation in 10 Seconds or Less.

The article is focused on people calling American companies, and is part of a campaign within the US which included the GetHuman website. This site provides the sequence of buttons to press for different companies customer service numbers which will bring you straight through to a human operator.

A funny take on this from LifeHacker recommends using expletives to get straight through to an operator when faced with an automated voice recognition system.

The IVR operator gave me a list of options, I said, “F*@#!” and he said: “I think you said you want to talk to a customer service agent. Is this correct?”

Back to the VOIP-News article - one of their points in their 50 tips was as follows:

Very interesting - for companies who provide freephone 1800, CallSave 1850 and LoCall 1890 numbers have to pay for these numbers every time a customer calls them on them. So, the less time someone spends on hold on the phone, the less money they have to pay.