did you ever call a company for service and support only to discover a mind numbingly endless series of prompts to push buttons and do a whole lotta wasteful shit in the hopes of reaching a living, breathing and sentient human? ever get so pissed off that you kicked something, swore out loud, hurt the ones you love and ripped your sleeve a la ‘jazz singer’?… and then took it all out on the rep when he/she finally did answer (with an accent, totally underpaid in some other country…and ultimately requesting that you redial and enter some other nonsensical string of digits)? well, this guy named paul english finally took some action…you might recall that i mentioned him briefly in the ajax part 2 round-up (he’s a founder of kayak)..

…back in the day, when kids were just called “hyper” and lived med-free lives, it used to be that you could call some company and then just bang that fucking zero key on your phone over and over until some living thing picked up - but companies cut off that route, hoping to drive down service costs by forcing customers (all highly valued, mind you!) into automated self service systems…but that’s never good enough, you know? so this guy paul actually took the time to collect and organize all of the shortcuts and dial-arounds that will allow for you to call some company and bypass all of the bullshit and get a real person on the phone…from paul’s explanation, “I created the IVR Cheat Sheet to help you more quickly get to an actual human when you are trying to call a company for service. (The term “IVR” stands for Integrated Voice Response, the fancy name for those annoying computers who answer most phones these days.)”….

he’s pulled together an amazing IVR cheat sheet with the help of countless user contributions and it is organized cleanly and neatly into the following sections: finance (amex, paypal, etc), government (social security, veteran’s affairs etc), insurance (aetna, geico etc), pharmacy (cvs, walgreens, etc), products (bose, sony etc - needs some contributions here!!!), retail (best buy, toysrus, etc), shipping (ups, dhl, etc), technology (aol, dell, etc), telco (all of landline and wireless carriers), travel (airlines, etc) and tv/satellite (from comcast to tivo and xm)….and btw, the information page describing the cheat sheet also offers some ideas to bypass automated systems, remember to check it out…

…and please note: the entire database (as it is presented with user contributions) is maintained in real-time on a separately searchable site, so you might want to visit the quickbase home for this whole project to add your own (11/21, evening update: this used to say, “to get the absolute latest additions, changes and commentary, including those most recent additions still pending approval” - but the visible quickbase site is no longer visible, sorry!)…

the instructions are clear - and read carefully, because it’s not always a series of numerical entries - you often have to say something at a voice prompt like “i don’t know” or in my case, “what the shit?“…enjoy it and bookmark it! btw, i’ve got one to add: direct treo support from sprint/nextel (dial 866.818.1944, that’s it…and of course you’ll still have to wait, but at least you’ll skip the other bullshit queues)…

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