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Comment by nomadpgmr | Hacker News Reader

I called the local Apple Store, got what was probably an AI. I just needed the hours, so that was OK, but then it asked if I needed anything else. I asked for winning numbers to the lottery. It thunk and thunk and thought some more and came back with, I’ll have to pass you to a store employee. Now I know how to avoid 1,000 questions and get a live person.

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I just keep repeating "operator" ad nauseam not stopping for anything other than the sound of the call transferring and that almost always works.

Better just play operator.ogg use your favorite media player on loop until someone does pick up.

I just keep blowing raspberries down the line until I'm connected to a human.

There are or course some asshole companies whose bots are designed to never connect you to a human and just hang up after a while.

This is a satisfying way to deal with frustration. Unfortunately, it also gets spit all over whatever device you're speaking toward. Sometimes worth it for sure, though.

Oh you can direct the stream a bit to the side or just raspberry softly. The important thing is to make sure the prrffftt sounds are Gaussian-distributed.

Sometimes yelling fuck shit piss bitch cunt fuck ass whore etc works. They have them setup to detect swear words to figure out when youre pissed off and need to talk to a human lmao

Xfinity/Comcast automated support has swear word detection. I eventually picked up on this after the 4th or 5th time they sent out a non-technical 'technician' in response to my concerns over SNR causing connection instability.

(Me: "here is a comprehensive analysis of modem logs over the past 7 days and clear indication of the cause"; Xfinity: "Let's turn off the wifi router for 30s! It didn't work the last 50 times but it's the only thing we can do.")

That honestly is just the worst when it happens. It sucks for both the rep on the phone and you since it's just a waste of both of your time (though at least they get paid for it).

Had a similar back and forth over multiple days where I spent hours on the phone with them. On the third day they finally sent me to a different call center with someone in the US that was authorized to go off script and actually solve my problem. Took five minutes.

I just don't understand how it makes sense. Considering just how much these companies limit the utility of customer service, it's no wonder they want to switch to LLMs. It's likely no worse than the service they are already providing 99% of the time.

When I had Concast (with Sonic now) I remember hating having to call them. Their CSRs can be really terrible. I once said “are you fucking kidding me?” or similar and that was their legit way out of having to help and they hung up.

Depending on the company, you sometimes get routed to the angry people recovery section when you do this. And so then, the Comcast agent on the other end is in stern counselor mode ready to de-escalate what seems to the robot to be a fuming, angry customer and gets completely thrown off when you’re super chill with them (or at least, you hopefully are chill with them!)

For some reason your reply immediately caused me to imagine Ross Geller shouting into the phone, "Operator", like the, "Pivot" scene from friends.

I must speak to a human!

Humaaaan!

Humaaaaaan!

HUMAAAAAAAAN!

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