I'M PHONE HEARING CHALLENGED

    At the risk of being called a grumpy old man, I'm going to comment on phone issues again. 

     I'll start a bit back on my post. In my seniors pension and benefit magazine, there was an article informing us that we had to set up a Members Health Care Account. In the future no mailed statements would be sent out. Well, that does sound a bit Darconian as I'm sure many of the elderly are not on computers or the Internet. I did not have an Internet account with them but I did go immediately to set up and account. I did all the right things. In fact, I did all the right things a couple of times. I kept getting the same response that they were unable to recognize my info. 

     They very kindly gave a phone number if we needed help. So I phoned. I got someone who I could not hear very well and they had an accent that only complicated the situation. At times I didn't know if the person was speaking English. I asked the person if they were on a head set. I asked them to speak much louder, I asked them to speak slower. None of this made any difference. I could understand less than 50% of what was said.

    Finally , I got that she would email a password reset. 

     Fine . I can handle that.. 

    Now for most password resets, by the time you open your email, the message is there. So I did not find a message in my email. I waited. No message. I waited an hour and there was no email. So I looked around and found my email in the "other" section of my email account.

    So for something that should be simple task  I got into an unnecessary runaround. 

   Now I know that my hearing is not the best. When I speak directly to people I can easily get what they say. When I skate, we have music and I can still carry on a conversation. What's with the people on the phones?

   Sometimes I think that some of our phone people have no Idea how they project over the phone. I also think that some of them don't care if they accommodate phone callers.

Don't Ya Just Hate it When...

      Don't ya just hate it when you can't hear people on the phone?  I'll admit right away that I have a hearing problem , but it's not that severe. I do have the volume turned up on my phone.

     So what are the problems I have. People talk too quickly. I would like  people to talk slower and then they have more precise  diction. I get upset when somebody answers the phone with rapid fire speech and I'm not too sure if I even  have the right number. I have to ask the person to repeat. You can ask some people to slow down and they get it and keep their speech at a slower rate. Some just can't adjust the rate of speech. Some people are probably a little nervous on the phone and become tense and the rate keeps up.

    Some people will not talk into the receiver so they are not loud enough to be heard. Their volume goes up and down. 

     Some people use a speakerphone and you get too much echo for consistent sound. My daughter tends to use the speakerphone when she calls so they can both get in on the conversation.

     Many call centers use headsets and they are very poor as the mike gets too far away from their mouth.

    Sometimes there's too much background noise to hear the caller very well. I had a friend who lived very close to a railway track. Sometimes the train was going by when I would try to speak to Lloyd. It was impossible.

     Some of the little cell phones are extremely cheap so the voice reproduction is poor. Last night I had a call from somebody who sounded as if they were at the bottom of a well.

    Sometimes there's too much noise in my house. That's one I can handle myself. SHUT UP! I sometimes say give me a second to turn the radio off. 

    Sometimes you find a very long recording of options  to choose from. By the time I get to the end I forget the number I should have chosen. Large stores are bad for this one. Home Depot or Walmart are bad. In fact, Walmart's phone system is just all bad.
  
     The recording that bugs me the most is to my doctor's office. There's a long recording. Half of it I cannot hear. The voice is weak and I'm sure gum is being chewed as she's making the recording. Why do they always choose the poorest voice to make the tape.

    So there's my rant. I hope that some call system might see my rant and have a session with their employees. Fat chance though! Call centers are just happy to find people to answer phones.

    How about you? Do you find it difficult to follow things on the phone?