Your Call Is Being Held in Priority Sequence… You Are Low Priority

Dear Solitary Reader: Right now I am on hold with Shaw Digital to hook up an HD Box. I am on hold not once, but twice… simultaneously. How you ask? How is it possible for GLOM THE  CONGLOMERATE to do this to me? Tell you in a second (your curiosity is placed in priority sequence).

I have been on hold in one form or another for over an hour now. My call is being held in priority sequence. I am low priority.

Maybe its my middle child syndrome acting up but I’m starting to get a little pissed off here; I am being ignored. I hate being ignored. I can go anywhere and being ignored. I am paying these SHAW people a fair bit of money a month here, am I paying these people to ignore me?

Apparently.

Perhaps it was an omen. When I, Robot first answered the phone it told me SHAW was experiencing higher than usual call volumes. But I ignored that. Do you know why I ignored it?

I ignored it because every time I have called SHAW they are experiencing higher than usual call volumes. Every time. For SHAW high call volumes are, apparently, normal. It’s like at work when every email management sends you is marked urgent. If everything is urgent, nothing is and I can go back to playing minesweeper. If you are experiencing higher than usual call volumes all the time, SHAW, then you need to change your definition of “usual call volume.”

And how am I on hold twice simultaneously you ask? I’ll get to that (thank you for continuing to read my blog. Your curiosity is important to me).

One of the most annoying things about the SHAW hold system is the continued breaking of the barely tolerable hold music with HARRY The HAPPY TECHIE. That’s my name for him/it, not theirs.

Harry interrupts the outdated, non-copyrighted hold music with these useful little tips – YOU CAN CHECK YOUR EMAIL ON THE INTERWEB!!! Harry sounds like he’s trying to teach 86 year olds how to use email. He talks to me like I talk to my kid. My kid’s 4.

I honestly hope HARRY runs into an EMP blast at some point and get’s fried. I … hate… Harry

Okay, so how does SHAW have me on hold two times simultaneously? Well it turns out that “Activating your digital terminal is easier than ever,” so says ANGELA THE ANNOYING ANDROID in her dead voice, and all you have to do is go to their handy dandy online activation system which puts you in contact with a representative.

So I did that, but at the same time I recalled their 1-888 number… I was on hold on the phone and on the Internet – two different avenues to exhaust my patience which was now drying up as fast as spit during high noon in the Sahara.

Well I did manage to get throw on the Interweb faster than on the phone – I think I was at the 20+ minute mark for both when I got in contact with Jeff #4503.

Now this is the thing about Shaw that I’ve found: waiting to get a hold of someone there sucks but when you finally do get around to them they’re smart and they can walk you through you’re problem fairly quickly.

I reiterate: Jeff #4503 did great.

ANGELA the ANNOYING ANDROID and HARRY the HAPPY TECH… not so much.