DirecTV owes us money. Since we switched over to Dish Network, and DirecTV bills in advance, they owe us $55 and have been sending us "bills" to notify us of this for the past couple months. What they haven't sent, though, is a check. Aside from the ludicrous notion of wasting postage and paper to tell us they owe us money instead of just sending the money, this leaves us having to go to them to request our money back.

O.K., fine. That's bureaucracy. No big surprises here.

So yesterday, I called the 800 number on the bill. After sitting through a long speech that reminded me of a cut scene on a bad video game that won't let you press past it, I got to a voice recognition system. In short, I needed to say, "Yes" to speak with a representative. Problem: the voice recognition software apparently only understands esparanto or something, because I tried saying "Yes" in every accent, dialect, and voice I could mimic, and it couldn't understand me, repeating the same question over and over. Finally, it asked me to press "1" instead. That didn't work, either.

I hung up and tried a corded phone, and this seemed to work better. For some reason, because that phone is a different line and has a different caller ID number, it automatically took me to a different menu system, so I still don't know whether it was the different line or the different phone that made the difference, but when I finally got to talk to a human being, she told me that they're trying to fix it.

Now, I understand that technology doesn't always work, but I had the same exact problem when I called them over a month ago. If they know this is a problem that people can't get through to them, they need to do something about it until it's fixed. I'm thinking they could hire a few dozen operators from a temp agency to route the calls, or else go back to a different system that doesn't require voice recognition.

I love technology, and when I want some quick information, I don't mind phone menus, but we can't let technology be the end to itself. It is a tool, and if my hammer breaks, I'll use a wrench to pound in the nail until I can get a new hammer.  It's not ideal, but it gets the job done.