I'm no longer on hold…but not because I got to speak to Tech Support. After 45 minutes waiting, I called the company on Line 2 and told them how long I'd been waiting on Line 1. A nice lady — who, alas, had no power to get Tech Support to actually speak with me then and there — apologized, took my number and promised they'd phone me within one hour. This has not happened.
In the meantime, I got this message from Brian Phillips, a wise and sage reader of this site…
I empathize.
The day after my birthday, I needed an item that only a certain supermarket sells and it's about 25 miles away, so I'd rather know that they have it before driving. I called to ask them and they put me on hold.
I waited.
Then I got in the car.
I drove all the way there (they had what I was looking for) and I spoke to the manager. I said, "If you look at line 1, that's me on hold, waiting for your staff to find out whether you had this item. I showed him my phone. I was on hold for 35:52.
He did not apologize. Hopefully, he spoke to the staff about this.
In an ideal world, all these CEOs who are paid six and seven figures per year to run a company would have the following clause in their contract. Once a week, they must get on their cell phones or call from home, phone their company, pretend to be just an average customer and ask a real question. If they don't get a satisfactory answer to that real question within fifteen minutes, their salary for that week goes to charity. If they don't receive that satisfactory answer within thirty, the entire salary for that year goes to charity.
It probably wouldn't change anything but some money would go to a good cause.
And just as I was proofreading the above before posting it, Tech Support called me and gave me the answer to my problem: The device is old, it's out of warranty, the price of repairing it is about 80% of the price of a new one and their new model is so much better. I've decided to toss it out and buy a new one…of a different brand.