Your Cable Company’s “Phone Bot” System is Leaving Seniors in the Dust. There is one solution.

Seniors living alone are at the mercy of technology they cannot navigate.

Paramount to this story’s rant is an important issue: What are the cable companies going to do about senior citizens who cannot navigate through their “phone bot” system?

There are seniors who are not computer savvy, don’t have computers or smartphones, or if they do, cannot operate their apps and texts properly without constant intervention from children and grandchildren.

When their cable goes down, how are they supposed to get a technician appointment when there is no override to the cable companies’ “phone bot” system to allow them to talk to a human being? I know there isn’t, because I spoke to a human cable employee (He called ME. I wasn’t allowed to call him.) who told me so.

I am almost 75 years old and have been working with computers for 40+ years. I have operated my own websites and although I hate doing it, I am able to navigate my way through a “phone bot” system, yet this story happened to me:

I am frustrated and angry. I am in no mood to hear, as my sister who is seven years my junior tells me, that I have to get used to the way business is conducted now and “go with the flow” in relation to ‘customer service’.

I’m going to assign a fictitious name to the cable company that elicited this story, not to be magnanimous, but because I don’t want to get sued. It doesn’t matter. Most cable companies operate in a similar fashion.

It started a few weeks ago with the TV in my bedroom not picking up a signal. It was intermittent, but by last week, it was constant. No signal no matter what I did. The den TV and Internet were fine. Streaming ‘WEDONTCARE Cable Company’ on my laptop was fine.

I had no choice but to give in and call WEDONTCARE Cable Company. Not only will they not allow you to speak to a human being, but now the “bot” that answers threatens you with either following its instructions or ELSE. The “bot” ASKS you if it can send you a text message. If you answer “no”, it hangs up on you. If you answer “yes”, it informs you that the “text message bot” will take you through a series of steps to do with your TV remote control. It will transfer you to a chat bot if that doesn't fix the TV.

If you follow all of the chat bot’s directions and the TV still doesn’t work, it will put you in line to talk to a human being. BUT. BUT, there’s a big BUT. If you don’t first do everything you are told by each of the “bots” (which many seniors are unable to do), you will be placed at the END OF THE LINE for a chance to talk to a human and the wait will be considerable.

So now I’m being threatened by a “phone bot”?

I was beyond furious. None of my screaming “agent” got me anywhere. I finally agreed to receive a text message, which I clicked on, and it said………….. …………… “This website is not working.” DO I MAKE UP THIS STUFF???? NO, I DON’T.

Some bot somewhere figured out that the text wasn’t working and a lady with an accent so thick I could barely understand a word she said came on the line.

That phone call started a scenario that lasted NINE hours. NINE hours of my time while I was trying to write an article for Medium.

I am sure you are familiar with the fact that the foreign workers hired by American companies are trained to adhere to a “script”. They recite what is in the script at a fast pace and do not stop to allow you to interrupt to ask a question. They keep talking unintelligibly over your protestations.

My blood pressure rising to dangerous stroke levels, I screamed at her to STOP! STOP! STOP! ( No, it wasn’t polite of me to yell at her, but I could not get her to stop until I resorted to yelling.) When she finally stopped talking and listened to my request to slow down, she slowed her speech enough so that I understood most of what she said.

When she told me to unplug the modem, I told her I had done that three times already (I’m quite familiar with their drill), and I wasn’t doing it again. I wasn’t doing another thing. I wanted a technician to come to the house to fix my cable.

She then told me (which I took as a nasty threat), that if the technician came to my house and determined that the problem was MY fault — as I had a loose plug, a plug inserted into an incorrect USB port, something plugged into the wrong outlet, weak remote batteries, to cite a few examples, then WEDONTCARE Cable Company was going to charge me $100.

So first, I’m threatened by a bot that if I don’t do everything it tells me to do, I will be sent to the back of the “call answering” line. Then I’m threatened with a $100 bill if WEDONTCARE Cable Company determines the outage is due to my ineptness.

Having succeeded in her quest to make me so angry I was rendered speechless, she set up a technician appointment for the following day between 3 PM and 5 PM.

Do you think that was the end of it? NOOOOOO. For the rest of the day (the NINE hours I referenced in the beginning), I got texts from WEDONTCARE Cable Company telling me to click this link and do what it told me to do.

When I clicked away and the TV still didn’t work, I got more phone calls. One phone call after another from people I could barely understand who wanted me to try this and that to get the TV going. I complied once and then refused the next five times they called. I said I had an appointment with ‘WEDONTCARE’ the following day and the technician who was unlucky enough to have gotten me as his assignment was going to fix it. Period.

Then around 3 PM, I got a call from an agent who spoke perfect English. He said he was a ‘WEDONTCARE’ technician and that they had a problem in my area, which they fixed.

If I would turn on my TV, I would see that all was working fine. I did. It wasn’t. He asked me to follow his directions to get it working. I followed his directions exactly, pressing this, that, and the other button on my remote. Nothing happened. No signal. He confirmed my appointment for the following day, reminding me that if they determined the problem was my fault, they would charge me $100.

Half an hour later, I turned on the TV and it worked. I kept testing it by turning it on and off, and it continued to work. Wisely, I decided NOT to cancel my appointment. I could wait and do it in the morning — just in case.

A little while later, I turned on the TV. Nothing. The ‘No Signal’ message flashed and jumped around like a happy child on a sugar high.

For the next few hours, while I was writing this story, I was getting texts asking me if my issue was resolved and to tell them if I needed help. I kept texting them — NO, it’s not resolved. They kept asking me to text them what the problem was. I texted them. The last text I received confirmed my appointment for the next day.

The following morning, I turned on the TV, and it WORKED. It was still early — plenty of time for it to conk out again, so I did not cancel my appointment.

A little later in the morning, I received a call from a ‘WEDONTCARE’ agent, informing me that they had identified the problem as THEIRS. Not mine. The problem was in my neighborhood area with THEIR equipment. They worked all night to fix it, and would I turn on my TV now to let him know if it was working? I did. It was.

He then made a big mistake. He asked me if there was anything else he could do for me.

That’s when I went into a tirade about the “phone bot” system and wanted to know how it could be overridden so a confused senior (or anyone, for that matter) could speak straight to a human.

He was not interested in a discussion on the subject. He curtly told me that there was no way to override the system. It was the way it was. Thank you for choosing ‘WEDONTCARE’ cable. Goodbye.

Is there a solution?

A senior living alone, without children and grandchildren readily available in the house to handle “phone bot” systems that require expertise with smartphone apps and texting, will surely be “left in the dust” by these cable companies.

I have found only one solution to this problem:

It is an all-service WEDONTCARE Cable Company store that recently opened in my city. According to the newspaper reports, any WEDONTCARE Cable Company customer can come into the store and have all their issues solved by a human being working the many counter stations.

The customer will be able to:

Return and exchange equipment

Cancel and change service

Pay their bill

Make an appointment for home technical service

Of course, this does require that the seniors either drive themselves (a subject for another article) or arrange for a ride but, currently, it seems to be the best and only solution to avoid “phone bot” hell.

I would suggest checking to see if one is available in your area.

What do you think? Do you consider this a problem for senior citizens, and if so, do you have any suggestions for a solution?

©Joan Gershman 2023

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