I could scream. Yesterday I spent hours on the telephone trying to fix other peoples’ mistakes, which if I hadn’t done that, it would only have gone worse for me. When Charlie showed up, he too was ready to explode having gone through a similar ordeal of his own.

My day of battle started with a letter from my co-insurance company saying that they could not reimburse my hospital bill until they had all of the information from Medicare. The hospital is supposed to take care of that; guess what? They hadn’t. I wasn’t surprised having been through this particular fire drill before. So rather than subject myself to hours of phoning various clerks who either wouldn’t know what I was talking about, or who would route me through phone messages that would shunt me from office A to office B and then back to where I began, I decided to call the president of the hospital and dump this in his lap. Sorry to do this, but I’ve had a stroke and need to watch my blood pressure. Plus, being in a convalescent home every time I dial the outside world, I’m hit with a hefty surcharge.

Feeling that perhaps I’d gotten something accomplished I was confronted with a letter from Medicare stating that they would not reimburse me for new wheels I’d had put on my walker. I called Medicare, and was transferred from office A to office B, and none of the recorded messages where I was supposed to press 1 for this and press 2 for that, and press 3 if I was thinking of killing someone, and 4 if I already had--but other than the last two options--none of them applied to my case. Somehow, I finally managed to get hold of a human being, who would not reveal her last name, and who promptly tried to refer me to another number.

"Please, have pity," I begged on the verge of tears. "I’m in a convalescent home; I can’t move, and it’s so hard to make these calls." Okay, maybe I embellished, but I was desperate.

Moved by my sad story, she looked up my file and saw that I’d actually been charged for a whole new walker. She then put through a conference call to the medical supply store, and the error got corrected. A glance at the clock told me the entire exchange had lasted well over an hour...my phone usage is charged by the minute. I felt my blood pressure spiraling up.

When Charlie showed up he had a similar tale of how his insurance company had messed up his homeowner’s policy and had misrouted the verification to California. His mortgage company—having not received the verification--informed him that they were purchasing a policy, for which he would be billed. And so, as I was ‘pressing one for homicide’, ‘two for suicide’, he was doing the same, wasting hours of his time on mistakes made by others.

I am so sick of having to deal with these unnecessary ordeals by phone, where it’s bad enough that we have to suffer for others’ mistakes, but that the problem is horribly compounded by the obstacles put in place through corporations and bureaucracies that have come to the unanimous opinion that we—the consumer—prefer to talk to machines than to human beings to whom we can at least try and explain the situation. And in the midst of it all, we have to listen to lies that come over the phone in a bland and pleasant voice:

"Thank you for calling X, your call is important to us."

No, it isn’t, if it was someone would pick up the damn phone and talk to me!

"All of our customer representatives are currently on another line, please hold, and someone will be with you shortly."

No, they won’t. It could be a very long time, and this is costing me a fortune!

"For quality purposes, your call may be recorded."

Excuse me? Why are you telling me this? Is it some kind of warning that if in my frustration I start to tantrum you’ll throw it back in my face with a recording?

I could scream! If in fact my "call were important" they wouldn’t have made the cost-cutting decision to replace human beings with computers; this was deliberate. Something needs to be done about it.

When I have a problem, I want to talk to a human being. And yes, with some answering services, if you press "0" you can bypass the options and be put through to a person—unfortunately, this doesn’t always hold true. What will it take to change this trend?

By all means, letters of complaint are good. Of course you need to get the full name and address of the person to send them to—not an easy task. But being Americans, we have another suggestion—a class-action lawsuit. Why can’t we get a few thousand people whose time has been wasted in these coronary-inducing telephone misadventures to file suit against the biggest offenders? All it would take would be one multi-million dollar case to get awarded on the side of the consumer, and we’d see changes. There’d be money for wages lost due to time spent waiting for "the next available customer representative" and of course, big bucks for our pain and suffering.

In the end, all we ask is that if our call really matters, if the customer is "number one" then stop lying, pick up the phone, and talk to us.

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