Introduction

In recent years, corporate telephone systems have been turned over to robots! "Press one if you want English... "; If you don't press one, the robot begins to speak to you in Spanish with the first menu! If you can wade through three or four menus you may get to talk to a human, or maybe not.

Cell phone users are lucky if they can accomplish anything before the screen times out and they can see no numbers to push in order to comply with the menus of the corporations that do not want to speak to their customers.

A few people have collected and published codes that will bypass the ubiquitous corporate phone menus. Next time you want to get some TLC from Customer Service stop by http://gethuman.com/ and check out the codes for the company you want to communicate with. The home page displays a search box. Type the name of the company you wish to reach and, if it's in the database, the desired information will pop up for you. Or you can browse the lists of companies by clicking the telephone button then the "Browse All Companies A-Z" button. There are numbeous buttons on subsequent pages to help move you along.

As if this behavior wasn't enough, now we have to endure in-coming calls from companies using computers to connect to the numbers. This is known as "Robo Calling." See the reprint of an article written by Dave Lieber for his Watchdog column in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram listed in the menu on the left side of this page.

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