This came out with poor timing.
You see, yesterday afternoon was spent trying to use a company’s website. I was sent a bunch of stuff from a company, complaining about my mother’s failure to respond to their entreaties — she died in 2024. I’m still dealing with random bureaucratic nonsense, because apparently they didn’t get the public announcement my lawyer published. So I called them.
What followed was steps similar to what you see above.
Except that I managed to get through to a human representative. Unfortunately, it was someone with a thick Indian accent, so we struggled for a while, but eventually we distilled everything down to a request for documentation, etc., and she was sort of helpful, and told me what to do to maybe clear all this up.
By faxing all these documents to a number. Faxing. Who uses a fax anymore?
I found a site that lets me email them stuff that then gets faxed, for a price.
I am now waiting to see if all that worked.
I also contacted Boeing, which went much more smoothly. I think I’ll miss the monthly copy of The Aerospace Mechanic that they’ve been sending me.
The charities are the most persistent. Despite my sending them a letter telling them my mother died in 2022, I still regularly get entreaties addressed to her. I’ve also given up monitoring her email as a lost cause, as for years nothing other than corporate dreck has come in.
Seeing a flowchart without start and stop cartouches still sets my teeth on edge, even 45 years after my formal indoctrination process came to an end. Is this what religious confliction feels like to others?
PZ: Your “xkcd” link goes to the previous post “Sorry, I’m going to be pessimistic again”, not to xkcd.
I got calls for my mother for at least 15 years after she died. I still get calls for my late wife nearly 3.5 years after her death. This tells me two things (I think), one is that phone lists circulate endlessly with no one ever doing basic checks on their validity, and two that none of these organizations either check or honor the Do Not Call List.
This is what the after life is. With the AI driven Eternal After Life® coming to an app store soon…
The previous owners of our house died in 2018, and we are still getting mail from charities addressed to them. Sometimes I will write, “Return to Sender. Addressee Deceased!” in bold red pencil on the envelope, but I think that only amuses me. I don’t think it’s ever worked to stop the charities from sending their begging letters. They are all religious charities, for what that is worth. That could be more of a result of the beliefs of the previous owners rather than the religious charities being more persistent.
As for navigating company phone systems, I gave up on that years ago. My current solution is to keep saying into the phone variations on the words; “Operator”, “Agent”, “Representative”. About 95% of the time that eventually connects me to a real, living, person. It may take 5 minutes of increasing frustration, but it’s better than trying to navigate those automated systems.
Your call is important to us. Please hang up and call again between 9:00 and 9:15 BNT, Tuesday’s only.
The first thing an automated telephone system should do is tell you how long the wait is to talk with a human. The second thing is to offer you a chance to leave a message. The third thing is to go through the ‘helpful questionnaire designed to speed things up with the human’.
I have received ZERO religious nonsense in my mother’s name. Although nominally a believer, she avoided all that phony piety. Much of what I get is more related to her long association with Boeing.
She built missiles for them.