So I’ve noticed that when a customer service phone line is experiencing high volume, nowadays they try to build a “safety valve” where they upsell you extra hard on trying to solve your problem via the website and/or make you say “I really need an agent” a few extra times before they put you through. This is pretty annoying but at least there still is a path to a living, breathing representative who can solve your problem as long as you are willing to wait on hold.

However, I recently encountered a truly evil, novel variant of this safety valve. Basically, I needed someone in the billing department at a company to correct an error. Only billing department staff have the power to do this; a regular customer service representative can’t do anything but forward the call to billing.

Naturally, when you first call the company and say “Agent please” 17 times, the agent who finally picks up after waiting on hold is just a general purpose customer service rep. I spoke with the customer service rep and she said, “OK, yeah, you need to talk to billing for that, let me put you through.”

Waited on hold for five minutes, and someone picked up: “How can I help?” I explain my problem. “OK, yeah,” he says, “That’s something you’ll need to talk to billing for. Can I put you through?”

Uhh, sure? 5 more minutes on hold, another rep answers: “Hello, this is customer service, with whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”

FRICK man