Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Phone customer support
Raised as a usability problem by 19 people on Hacker News over 17 years (2010–2026), in 16 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Voice prompts are unreliable and slower than keypad entryUnreviewed
20102026- Slow, hard-to-navigate phone bots; guessing keywords wastes minutes before reaching a person2023-04-01
- Voice prompts are unreliable and slower than typing account numbers on keypad2023-03-18
- Voice bot repeatedly fails to recognise the user's surname, forcing repeated repetition2018-06-08
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 19 complaints
- Phone menu forces long irrelevant speech after the caller already chose cancel2026-03-22
- Callers must navigate stupid numbered menus to reach help2024-07-06
- Slow, hard-to-navigate phone bots; guessing keywords wastes minutes before reaching a person2023-04-01
- Getting anything done by phone is far slower than using the app or website2023-03-18
- Voice prompts are unreliable and slower than typing account numbers on keypad2023-03-18
- Can't tell whether hold recordings are a human, making waiting on the line stressful2023-01-06
- Must sit through several menu levels before reaching a human representative2022-11-02
- Must re-enter account or order info already typed into the phone tree2022-09-04
- Adding a name to a bill needed repeated calls, each with a 50-minute wait2022-04-22
- Phone menus bury the option to reach a human, making support calls take hours2022-03-24
- Must re-enter account number already entered, then gets transferred to voicemail repeatedly2021-09-20
- Bot keeps asking unrelated questions instead of connecting user to a human consultant2021-07-08
- Must sit through many menu options to reach a human agent2020-10-01
- Hold audio clips, goes silent, and calls drop, losing place in line2020-09-30
- Must re-enter account validation info repeatedly across queues and presses many buttons2019-10-17
- Must sit through repeated recording listing options, even when their issue isn't on the list2018-06-08
- Voice bot repeatedly fails to recognise the user's surname, forcing repeated repetition2018-06-08
- Forces callers through horrible DTMF menus or mediocre voice recognition2013-03-22
- Problems take many long calls and repeated tiers to resolve, with no one fixing them2010-02-21