Ask HN: How to fix the headache of telephone haggling?

2 points by timothybone 10 years ago | 2 comments

I wish corporations had their shit together, make it easy on the consumer, but often they don't. Calling institutions to resolve disputes or handle general maintenance issues is a big waste of time and pain in the ass. Familiar with the long wait times when you call corporation x? It's especially bad when your question/problem is a thirty second (or less) fix/solution for the corp. support personnel to provide, because it's hugely frustrating to have to deal with waiting thirty minutes for something so simple. Could a startup solve this? At least fix the easy stuff? Could it save me the hassle of calling corp x when I need to: change home address, set up payment plans, resolve a charge dispute, request credit increase, change service, file a complaint, etc. etc. etc.

tmaly 10 years ago |

making a simple credit card payment to Macy's cost me 2 hours of wasted time. They frequently apply payments to the wrong accounts. I feel your pain about sitting on the phone

stephengillie 10 years ago | |

Why do you keep an account with them if it's so difficult to work with them? If you paid with an account held by a bank instead of by them, it might be much easier to make your payments and regain you those 2 hours a month.