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Comment by yardie | Hacker News Reader

> Even if they called me I wouldn’t use this. Hang up. Call them. Don’t let them call you.

This has become increasingly difficult in my experience. Where calling the local branch I have the actual relationship is just dumped into the IVR. They make it very hard to speak to an actual human being bank employee.

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All I can get is callbacks for some places. This is newish. You can call, wait in the queue for 20+ minutes, get routed to voicemail, and leave an option for a callback. That’s it. And the CSRs won’t reveal any semi-secret info to confirm who they are, they just want info to confirm your identity. It is frustrating because “calling them first” for anything billing related has been my go-to for a decade.

The (US) banks I've experienced will give you an "incident number"[1], you can call the number on e.g. your credit card or bank's website and say you have an incident number and you'll be connected to a rep who can pull up the details.

[1]: or something like that, I forget the exact words

Might be nice if you could enter that incident number from the initial phone menu instead of waiting for a human first.

My card has an international number which is US +1-(AreaCode)-XXX-XXXX. It used to bypass the IVR and send you directly to the top of the queue to a CSR. Because who has time to putz around the IVR when you're paying .25-.50/min to make an international call. Sadly, because some customers figured it out, it just routes you into the queue.

I just make them tell me how to do it.

If they are behind an annoying IVR they usually know how to get back to themselves.

Of course don't take their word on what number to call, make them point to a part of their website that shows the number.

I have experienced an increase in just flat out hang ups as well. If the automated system doesn't understand you, it'll just say "it looks like we're having a problem, goodbye". It's infuriating.

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