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This Call May Be Monitored ...
Iphtashu Fitz writes "We've all heard it. The recorded message when you call technical support or your bank or credit card company: 'This call may be monitored for quality assurance purposes.' But has it ever occurred to you that people actually DO listen in? Approximately 2 percent of these calls are listened to either live or after the fact, and it may come as a surprise that Big Brother even listens to what you may say while you are on hold. The people who monitor these calls routinely hear arguments between spouses or parents and children, people yelling at pets, and all sorts of other domestic disputes."
So the FBI and CIA know my mother's pissed that I haven't given her any grandkids yet? There goes my presidential hopes.
I always loved telling people they were on hold and listening to them for a while... People seem to lose all sense of reality when you tell them they are on hold.. Some of the names you get called are quite.... entertaining.
"Carpe Noctem"
This call may be monitored or recorded? Ok thanks, I'll just hit record now then.. thank you for your permission.
No todo lo que es oro brilla
The sad thing is I hate to think what some people have said while on hold.
"Dammit, Bob, that's not how you make crystal meth! Hold the phone for a sec, Janice. Eugene! Put that blunt away, it's mine dammit!"
Dammit... that was my first date this millenium, too. No wonder she told me off when I called!
"For quality assurance, your call may be monitored, quantified, duly mocked among coworkers, used in training courses as an example of a psycho user, or outright ignored."
Intelligent Design: because MATH is HARD.
This takes me back to the bad old days while working in a phone center for Cross Country Bank. On my last day I told everyone not to sign up for the Visa because the company sucked and the customer service number was long distance.
I really wanted someone to be listening to that, but I didn't get a response form the mysterious back room. I just hope they heard it on tape.
manda
I kept a young, hopeful MCI rep tied up for forty five minutes during a routine "would you like to try our internet service" call. Playing the role of a slightly mentally retarded teenager, I actually had the guy explaining to me that I could check my email when the computer wasn't connected, and that their install CD would work in my blueberry IMAC even though there were four other discs jammed in it already. The person monitoring the call broke in and asked the young man to "please terminate the call." He called me back when he realized what was going on and gave me a royal cussing, also informing me that he'd switched my long distance service to MCI's most expensive plan. I stayed in character the whole time, actually putting the phone down to go take a leak and returning to his angry yammering. When I returned, I explained to him (in my best "retard voice") that I'd set a pick lock on the line and he was full of crap. I got a call back the next day from the manager (who had broken into the previous call) and he explained that the kid had been disciplined. Whatever that meant. He probably got a few paid vacation days and an MCI tote bag.
You tell them you dont want to be recorded by hanging up. Then again, that does suck if your calling for support or something.
I knew one president of a company who noticed one day that every desk in the office had a recorder to record the telephone calls.
So he went to a local store and bought a bunch of casette tapes, took them back to the office, and put a tape in each recorder.
After that, about once a month, he'd go through the office to pick up the old tapes and put in fresh tapes.
He would then put the tapes he collected in a box in his car trunk. While driving around Houston, he'd listen to the tapes to see how his employees were dealing with the customers.
His wife actually ran the office. He acted more as an idea man and met personally with the customers whenever necessary.
One day his wife borrowed his car. She picked up the tape off the seat and put it in the tape player.
It was her telephone calls.
She thought her husband was spying on her and filed for divorce. As part of the divorce settlement, she received $1,000,000 paid in equal monthly installments over 5 years.
His lawyer screwed up royally. He didn't include a stipulation that she couldn't use the money to compete against his company.
So she used the money to start up a company that competed directly against him.
Without her running his office and without him delegating the authority very well to an employee to run the office, her company pushed his into bankruptcy in five years. At the time they filed bankruptcy, he had only one remaining payment of the $1,000,000 left to make.
I hope someone was listening the time I administered the Turing test to a female synthetic-voice / voice-recognition self-help system, in the form of an attempt to solicit phone sex... (Telus customer assistance robot: 1-800-400-2598)
One time I was on hold with some customer service guy, I turned to my friend and said, "omg this guy sounds like he's 12 years old". The guy came back on the line and said, "I heard that you know."
pwned.
But, if you're recording the hold music, the RIAA might have a thing or two to say about it.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Or worse: how many times they caught you humming along to the muzak. Next time they'll sick the RIAA onto you for this illegal public performance of copyrighted work!
About five years ago when I got my Dell laptop, I noticed that if I blew in to the phone it seemed that my hold time was greatly shortened. Blowing in the phone seemed to overdrive the audio into anoying distortion. I came to the conclusion that either a) someone is hearing this, or b) they have some sort of system that tries to gage how upset a person is by autio levels on hold (possibly more complex even, as I tried cursing at teh hold music several times with mixed results). :-)
This wasn't a once or twice thing, I probably called tech support 100 times while my laptop was under warranty for 4 years. I was very rough on it and finagled a warranty repair for everything I did to it. I ended up with almost 10K in repairs on a $3500 laptop, and at one point got a whole new laptop for a fried mobo with cracked plastic
All these techniques stopped working when dell switched to Indian support near the end of my warranty. Last thing I called in for was more cracked plastic... the nice, yet clueless Indian man suggested I check my hard drive for errors and possibly have it replaced... That said, no more Dells for me!
"It seems that when people become desperate they consult the gods, and when the gods become desperate they tell lies." -
I tried, but my number is always busy.
paintball
At What point during sex do you decide to call Tech Support? I would imagine the Arguments are the women complaining about the guy calling tech support because he is having a floppy problem, or possibly having trouble inserting something in some socket.
-William
God is everything science has yet to explain.
Paypal doesn't like it. Boy does this lady get mad. It's rather funny though.
For context, click Parent.