deekoo.net

June 29, 2009:

Dear Kaiser Permanente:
I can understand if you want to have robots call your existing customers. That's all fine and dandy. Calling a guy who moved out SEVERAL YEARS ago (I don't recall if he had service with them or not, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on it.) to ask if he would like information mailed to him is a little odd.

Doing this with a voice-recognition robot whose script does not provide any way to talk to a live person calling outdated customer numbers is obnoxious. While its script did give a number to call back, (866-984-1075), that number just led to another annoying robot, also without a live operator option. It did, however, recommend I call 866-464-4000 to talk to customer service when it couldn't figure out from my answers what it was supposed to do.

866-464-4000 in turn recommended I call another number to connect with singles in my area. I guess that's what they mean by 'thrive'.

A websearch turned up their sales number, but the salespeople insist my phone number is not in their database. Which would be fine if it were true, but obviously I wouldn't be getting robocalls if they didn't have my number. (And the robocall asked for someone I do know used this number once, so they definitely had the number in a DB under their control. Unless of course the survey is phishing, which is vaguely possible.)

Summary: Don't use Kaiser unless you like dealing with brain-damaged robots. If their customercommunications bot will redirect me to a singles line, BFD - I already called their AI a goatfelcher half a dozen times. However, I suspect that if you were using them as a source of medical care rather than a source of aggravation, having to spend twenty minutes talking to braindamaged robots before giving up and using the Internet to find their contact info would be counterproductive at best - and possibly actually dangerous, as I can just imagine trying to explain some important medical authorization problem to a poorly designed decision tree.

Interestingly, while Sales answers immediately, a websearch shows somebody saying that they needed to wait on hold *40 minutes* (and yet ranking the service quality as good?) to speak to the Virginia branch.

{ 0x0 Comments | Comment }

June 9, 2009:

{ 0x0 Comments | Comment }

May 17, 2009:

The Night Headaches are back, but now I think I know what they are. The only symptom of Cluster Headaches that they _don't_ come with is the pain being the Worst Pain In My Life - the hernia surgery was worse, thankyouverymuch.

Also, the Governator would like to borrow five billion dollars (as if we weren't in ENOUGH debt) so he can pretend that the budget cuts and/or tax increases necessary to balance the budget are his successor's fault. And that's if I'm being charitable. The uncharitable guess is that his buddies just want the state making payments to them forever.

And Obama's promised Change continues apace. So far, the Changes are:

- Immunity for telecoms companies that spy on Americans at the behest of the President, whether or not it was legal at the time. Justified on the grounds that not giving them immunity would discourage them from breaking the law if the President found it necessary in the future.

- Subsidy of the bankrupt megabanks, at taxpayer expense, while they buy up every other bank in sight.

- The assurance that the government does not consider minor functionaries to bear any responsibility for torture they participated in, on the grounds that if they were following orders it's only the fault of those who gave the orders.

- The assurance that there will be no commission to investigate accusations of torture, on the grounds that investigating torture might lead to partisan arguments.

- The assurance that Guantanamo Bay will be closed.

- The suspension of military tribunals in favour of civilian trials.

- The reinstitution of the suspended military tribunals.

- The assurance that a legal framework authorizing indefinite detention without trial will be created, justified on the grounds that we need a law allowing us to run Gitmo-style facilities on US soil.

I told you so.

{ 0x0 Comments | Comment }