After living with my parents for the past decade of my adult life, I'm happy to finally be graduated and out on my own. Of course, since this is my first time out on my own, I don't have a lot of things. Therefore, I need to cut corners where I can to help stretch my household budget. A friend of mine told me that Optimum has affordable Internet planes next to other major carriers, so I decided to call them to see what they could offer me as a new customer.
To be frank, I don't enjoy calling to set up new services because I hate dealing with salespeople, and so far, I have spent a lot of time on hold. When you move into a new home, no one tells you that you will spend hours of your first week in waiting lines while you set up your utilities. Regardless, there was no way around the task, so I went ahead and called.
"Welcome to Optimum. This call may be recorded. To get started, please enter the ten-digit number on your account or say, 'Use my account number.' You can also say, 'Become a customer.'" After I replied, "Become a customer," It said, "Alright, is this for your home or business?"
Once again, I answered home, and then it stated, "Okay, please tell me your zip code where you would like service." Then it confused me a bit by saying, "Thanks. How can I help you today?" I thought we had already covered this, but I said, "Become a customer again." I said this twice, but it didn't seem to want to listen. It said instead, "Sorry, in just a few words, please tell me what you are calling about. If you would prefer to choose from a menu, say give me a menu."
I tried twice again, and then it gave me menu options. One of the options was new customer, so I replied new customer once again, and finally, it said, "Sure, new customer." This part was a bit annoying because I basically argued with a robot for an hour about what I needed as a new customer, but once that was settled, it finally gave me an advertisement speech about Optimum and told me to hold just a bit to talk to someone. Once I got to the sales associate, they were actually helpful and ran me through the promotions and setup quickly. The automated system just clearly could use a tune-up.