Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for September 15, 2022

They do have the time to raise your rates to makeup for cable cutters.

At least they are sincere.

I notice that Rat only entered seven digits (four beeps, three boops); is this a strip from the past?

The hold music will have you throw the phone across the room.

Finally an honest message!

A couple of the places I sometimes have to call offer to call me back. And one of them has actually DONE it. Once. But honest, speaker-phone is the answer to long wait times: I put the phone beside me and go on about my business until the repetitious blather changes.

What burns me is when a voice comes on the phone and lets you know what position you are in the line, counts down until you are number three, tells you that you are next and then hangs up on you.

So… more than 59 seconds?

Your call is important to us. But not so important that we will hire people to answer it.

Yesterday I needed to call the power company and got “Call volume is very high right now. Please call back later.”

On my bill maybe I should write “Money is tight right now. Please bill me later.”

“Your call is very important to us.”

“Your punch to the face is very important to us.”

No, that’s when you try to call the water company!

At least they’re honest about it.

We were so late delivering a job in Texas, that the client said he wanted to punch somebody in the face; and I was the one who had to deliver it.

Best decision I made this year was to ditch satellite TV and go all streaming. Saving money and I don’t lose reception every time it rains, which is often in Florida.

There’s a reason I dumped “Bombast”

This scenario was maybe fifth on the list.

Rat, it’s 2022. It’s time to switch to Omozan Prime.

At least Rat didn’t have to go through endless press this number then this number etc. unless the beeps and boops got him to this point.

At least Rat was able to find a phone number. Many companies make it exceedingly difficult to contact them at all.

And they do this to you in order to save the salary of the lowest-paid person there.

They are telling you “Our time is important. Yours isn’t.”

but that estimate was true even before I started dialing!

leave you’re number and we’ll call you back. hahahaha

We don’t have Bombast Cable here, but the one we do have must use the same system. We have TDSettleinandwaitbecauseyou’llbehereawhile.

Try working with mycoverage.com .

And while you wait, we will play some extremely annoying, brain worm inducing music. With very poor recording quality.

Wait time to talk to an actual person? Doesn’t apply, because you can’t get through to an actual person.

They’re so disorganized…I know a friend who moved into a new house and had an appointment for cable to come to set her up with Wi-Fi! They never showed! She called and they said she didn’t have an appointment! Duh she did, she also told them to cancel all orders because they are too disorganized.

BEEP**Your call is important to us…BEEP**—It helps us practice our torturing skills!

If the place had a hold song, would Pig dance along to it?

Sounds like the Social Security Administration

cut the cable guys, it’s not worth it

INAPPROPRIATE “HOLD” MUSIC—

1.)Slow Boat To China

2.)Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off

3.)I’m Gonna Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter

… would you like to leave a message, including your phone number, and we will never return your call but will sell your phone number to persistent marketing phone calling companies?

I always feel better when the computer says, “Your call is very important to us.”

No it’s not. You’ll reach punch in the face WAY before they pick up on the other end. Then you’ll go through another three stages of violence before reching the “I’ll drop dead if they actually pick up” stage.

I will admit that I empathize with Rat when he grouses about everyday annoyances.

The problem, Rat, is that you can’t do that over the phone….

I don’t think I’ve ever had a call like that that didn’t claim call volume was high. If it is like that 100% of the time, then call volume is not higher than normal and they shouldn’t say that.