tips for each company
The gethuman site has detailed customer service info for many companies.
Simply click on any company name to find tips specific to that business. Otherwise, see below for more general customer service tips.
See tips for a specific company »
Recent tips and stories from others
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Brigid:
4 hrs ago for Experian
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"If you can't find the report number, you're screwed."
more »
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(anonymous person)
6 hrs ago for Wachovia Dealer Services
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"The WORST customer service I ever had. Every time when I tried to call them I spent at least 40-60 min waiting time, after my car was repossessed for two missing payments. The second payment was de..."
more »
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anon:
8 hrs ago for GE MONEY BANK
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"Slease bags they are. I am not a customer and never have been. The last couple weeks I have been getting calls, about 30 so far, for someone named Wanda. I don't know any Wanda, and in spite of tel..."
more »
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Rod:
11 hrs ago for WestJet
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"Have spent 3hours and 8 minutes over a period of 3 days trying to get a Westjet agent on the phone to help with a travel question. the service is a FAR CRY from what it used to be. Air Canada is begin..."
more »
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(anonymous person)
20 hrs ago for Virgin Media
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"If you call during the day you ill get through to an English person."
more »
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finding a toll-free phone number
To find the toll-free phone number for any US-based company, try calling
1-800-555-1212 or search Google for company name plus "phone numbers".
Or maybe even searching for the company name and "president office"
or "investor relations".
Tip: did you know that your phone company charges
$1.49 or more each time you call 411? Instead, try using
1-800-FREE-411 or 1-800-GOOG-411 (Google's free 411 service).
For companies who try to hide their phone numbers, many times
the Google search will find a page from a disgruntled customer
who exposes the phone numbers for that company. For example,
see these gripe pages about
Amazon.com and
PayPal
and
these
for eBay and
Walmart.
For a public company, you could also try searching
EDGAR.
The "10K" report includes information about corporate officers
and the official company mailing address.
Got a good general tip for others?
Tell us your tip for getting better customer service »
Got a good tip for a specific company?
Find a specific company first and add a tip for that company »
getting to a human
Once you have a phone number, here are some tips to try to
get through the computer to get to a live human:
- Interrupt.
Press 0 (or 0# or #0 or 0* or *0) repeatedly, sometimes quickly.
Unfortunately the same keystroke does not always work for each
company.
Many IVRs will connect to a human after a few "invalid entries",
although some IVRs will hangup. :-(
- Talk.
Say "get human" (or "agent" or "representative") or raise
your voice, or just mumble. :)
The IVR might connect you to a human after one of these key or
unknown phrases.
- Just hold, pretending you have only an old rotary phone.
- Connect to account collections or sales or account
cancellation; they always seem to answer quickly. First ask them
for their name and rep number (so they know you are writing it
down, and thus so they are more likely to help you.) Then ask them
to transfer you to the department you need. Sometimes they will put you
ahead of the queue, although sometimes they will send you to the end
(and thus in those cases this tip is useless).
- Toll call. For credit cards, if the expected wait time is
too long, hangup and try to call back on their non-toll-free number,
as they often have shorter queues.
- Selecting the option for Spanish will sometimes get you
a bilingual human more quickly than if you just waited for an
English-only operator.
- (recent tip from a GETHUMAN user) "Whenever I call places that have a high call volume,
I listen for a company directory. When it asks me for a last name keyed in,
I type in one letter and it gives me a list of corresponding people. I keep
doing this until I get someone. It's worked a lot."
When you do finally find a human, ask them how to connect
directly the next time (in case your call gets disconnnected
etc), and be sure to tell us so we can then list their
number here.
:-).
If one of the above does not work, the
gethuman database contains tips and shortcuts for many different companies.
Got a good general tip for others?
Tell us your tip for getting better customer service »
Got a good tip for a specific company?
Find a specific company first and add a tip for that company »
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