I want to talk to a person …

…. not your stupid machine.

How incredibly frustrating.

I have a Coles Myer Source Card. At the moment I can’t log on to their website to check my balance etc. When I try to log on it tells me to call their Customer Care Centre number and quote an error code. The problem is that all you get if you call them is one of those annoying pre-recorded voices that asks you to press 1 for this, 2 for that and 3 for something else.

None of their options lead you to a real person yet they call this their Customer Care Centre. Maybe it should be the Customer We Couldn’t Care Less Please Go Away and Stop Bothering Us Centre.

None of their options are helpful for my situation and even if I press something that I think might lead me down the right track, I just get another smiley voice telling me about more options that won’t get me any closer to speaking to someone.

I went round in circles for some time trying to find an option that would most closely link me to what I needed.

On their website, the only contact details are the infuriating phone number of their We Don’t Care Call Centre and a postal address. No email. That might give people the false expectation of a receiving a response. They obviously know that most people won’t sit down and write a letter.

Do I really need their card? Probably not. Maybe I’ll just cut it up and only deal with companies that have the decency to talk to the people who pay their wages; their customers.

Posted by Rodney Olsen



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About the author

Rodney Olsen

Rodney is a husband, father, cyclist, blogger and podcaster from Perth Western Australia.

He has worked in radio at Perth's media ministry Sonshine for over 25 years and has previously worked at ministries such as Compassion Australia and Bible Society.

The views he expresses here are his own.

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5 Comments

  • The worst ones of all are those that ask you to speak your option into the phone “in a firm voice”. You can’t even get as far as selecting the useless option on those lines.

  • Those are so frustrating!!! Almost as bad as the online services that only have email C.S.(and they never answer it), but no phone number! You feel so helpless to solve your problem.

  • I am in agreement with Chris. The worst ones are definately the so called “voice recognition” systems. They don’t even give you any choices, they just expect you to know exactly what you want and to be able to clearly articulate this in very few words within a few seconds. I have great difficulty in doing this and would much prefer a menu system which at least gives you a few choices (although I do empathise with Rodney’s situation where none of the options were what he wanted). With the voice activated ones I have learned to just speak gibberish (or say “Albert Davies” :))which invokes a response of “I am sorry, I could not recognise your response, please try again” After about three goes of speaking absolute rubbish, I finally get put through to a real person! Seems to have worked so far.

  • Did you try pressing 0 Rodney? That usually works for getting the operator (I say usually because I have come across a help centre that didn’t have it as an option which was most frustrating!)

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