Todd Stadler's blog

e*tirade

Out of sheer academic interest, I would like somebody to come up with a more aggravating phone system than that employed by E*Trade's Optionslink.

In an attempt to get my stocks out of their hands and into mine, I went to their website. I wanted to know whether they had actually processed my request for a stock transfer. They attempted to hide this information from me.

So I hunted around and eventually found their 1-800 number. If they would not tell me on their website, then I would get the answer from a human being on their phone line. Ho ho, says the audience, ho ho.

Indeed. They were far more clever than I. They did everything they could to ensure I would not hear the warmth of a human voice when I called. It would be too easy a victory to let me talk to an entity capable of feeling compassion. Compassion for a man scorned by a coy website. But if the website was coy, the phone system was downright belligerent.

I'm not sure who thought that being able to say my nine-digit identification number would be easier than typing it in on the phone's keypad. Are there yet people who don't know how to use the phone keypad? Maybe I missed all the ads for phone typing classes, but I'm fairly certain that the ordering of the keys makes sense.

Regardless, I was forced to listen to instructions that were twice as long as they needed to be, so that I understood how easy this technological marvel was.

Once past the Scylla and Charabdis of my ID number and password, my odyssey had only begun. For I was then confronted with several minutes' worth of information, none of which dealt with how to get this information to stop.

Forced to listen, I was told at length about how Intel was changing stock brokers from E*Trade to PaineWebber, how this transfer was taking place, at what time, and so on. My sole consolation was in thinking that this change was taking place because of E*Trade's monumentally crappy phone system.

Clearly revelling in their power to prevent me from completing my task, they then reminded me that all the information I was just told could be found at a website, one whose URL was too complicated to actually remember. Perhaps when I'm feeling masochistic I'll go look it up.

And yet the fun continued. For there was yet more extremely important information that had to be spoken at me before they could tell me what my options were on the phone menu.

It was somewhere in the middle of this second tirade that, out of sheer desperation, I banged the headset of the phone against my desk, imagining that the computer voice inside was at least mildly dinged in the process.

Much to my surprise, this outburst of noise actually stopped the flow of very important information. I was then given a set of options to choose from. Well, I guess violence does accomplish something!

I then began meandering through the maze of options, trying desperately to find a number I could press (or a phrase I could say!) that would lead me to a human being. But no matter what option I was given, it was clear that they didn't want me to talk to anybody.

So I started doing things intentionally wrong. I pressed options that didn't exist. I said the word "help" over and over, though I was not told it would, in fact, help.

At some point, the computer became confused enough to suggest that I say "customer service", if that's what I wanted. It sounded sort of upset that I obviously hated it. So I said "customer service".

In its last gasp at maintaining control of our conversation, the computer asked me if I was really sure I wanted to talk to a human.

"Yes," I said, "you stupid bucket of @$@*%^& @%*& ... Why don't you @$*&@ *@&@$ ... !!"

Cleverly, the computer tried to make sense of my suggestions to it, and once again became confused. So I again asked for "customer service".

This time, when it asked me if I was sure, I simply said "yes", cowed into submission by a computer that didn't like being cursed at.

I was then given another list of options, wherein I was told to press 1 if I wanted to talk to customer service. I guess they just wanted to be sure.

Thankfully, the human at the other end of the phone line was unable to confirm if my shares had been transferred, and suggested I call another 1-800 number, whose workers had already gone home for the day. Yay!

But just think about it. What if this phone system were a website?

Would a company delay your ability to use their site by splashing up screens of text you don't want? Would they hide the help button several pages down once you got inside the site? Would they ask you to confirm, several times, that you really meant to click the help button?

The sad thing is that some companies do this on their websites, but those companies will or should die a painful death. I wish no different a fate to the phone system at E*Trade.