Useless phone error messages
My wife and I have been trying to finalize some hotel bookings for a trip to Europe next month, and I've had no luck reaching a particular hotel in Germany, which necessitated me trying to call them today. I always forget the exact dialing format for international calls, and so I got the following message from SBC:"It is not necessary to dial 0 after the country code for this country."Here's my question: if they know I dialed zero, they know exactly where the zero occurred, and they know that it shouldn't be there, why can't they just take out the zero and complete the call for me? Instead, I have to jump through hoops for no apparent reason. As a consumer, this is how I translate their error message:
"We know you made a mistake, and we know how to fix it, but we don't want to."Fixing my error would cost virtually nothing and might actually provide me the illusion of good service, but I've learned that's too much to expect from the major telephone providers in this country.
tom sherman
· Friday, April 6Could be a legal issue... maybe they can't complete it for you because of the cost you'll incur?
I have my own issue with phones: inexplicable icons (on cell phones). I figured out this one on my old Nokia, but there's one on my new Samsung that I still can't make sense of.
Dr. Pete
· Friday, April 6UI on cellphones is still little more than an afterthought. On mine, I have to hit a hard to see button to confirm a new phonebook entry, or it'll be deleted on the very last step (after I've painstakingly typed in everything).