Have you ever put off a phone call for months only to have it resolved in minutes?

Quick answer: yes.

And an observation – telephone customer service has vastly improved since COVID began. Two anecdotes:

1. – i had to call Mutual of Omaha about my Medicare supplemental policy – a question of coverage or not. The guy answered it knowledgeably, completely, and authoritatively within about three minutes. I thought it would be like pulling teeth.

2— I had done a mail order for some summer shorts. They had mis-charged me. I thought that the customer service experience would be just awful. The woman I spoke to understood the problem, saw what the other person had done, fixed it, and credited me the difference. This took a bit more time, but they fixed the problem with no hassle.

All in all, I find improved service the last couple of months when calling.

^^ Cool. I’m putting off calling Verizon about something but maybe it won’t be too bad!

@janbb no guarantees. Past performance does not guarantee future results.

I think by now all of us have been conditioned through bitter experience to regard telephone “customer service” with the same enthusiasm as “root canal”. For my part, whenever such encounters work out in a short span of time I am amazed—sometimes dumbfounded. But all in all, I am so inured to telephone decision tree roulette that it is the great dread of my existence. And I will resist the necessity to be ensnared in the grinding frustration of it if at all feasible.

I tend to postpone anything that I think will be unpleasant. I have to make myself sit down and “just do it.” Even if it turns out to be unpleasant, I need to put it behind me.

Yes. I usually procrastinate making calls that I believe will result in me not being helped, nothing changing, having to ask someone to do work for me, or the answer will bring me one more step closer to having to make a decision I don’t want to make.

I mostly associate this sort of thing with calling a doctor’s office or lately with house hunting.

I actually never think about it in terms of calling the government offices. I typically have very good experiences. Calling the IRS is annoying, because it’s difficult to get through to a person sometimes, but SS and local government I’ve always had a very good experience.

Last year, while trying to get SS and Medicare I got so I dreaded calling the government to straighten things out. Whoever I talked to was always very pleasant and promised that the problems would be straightened out, and then did nothing. It made me nuts.

Mostly I just hate having to call anyone for anything official, I’d rather chat.

When I had the shop I was terrified to call the IRS. I finally did and to my amazement they were pleasant and really understanding.

Pretty much the story of my life. The only thing I hate more than the telephone is hearing my voice on a answering machine.

I would say a good 90% of the time my fear was unwarranted. And I am mostly talking about calling doctors. I have made so many calls to doctors over the last few years.

But there is Comcast. I eagerly call them since I expect every interaction to be the worst so I get drunk first. I do not want TV for the 15th fucking time. Fix my internet so I can watch Netflix you horrible people.

I’ve tried to call the DMV 3 times in the last week. I did my registration online almost a month ago, and got an email confirmation, but no tags yet. There is no way to contact a human by text, only a bot that doesn’t understand the question I am asking. The phone tree each time says anywhere from 45 minutes, to an hour wait. My anxiety level is very high.

Keep your email confirmation in the car with you, although if you get stopped the cop can see you’re good to go. And stop stressing KMom!