Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: Fri, 3 May 91 12:42:10 CDT From: Will Martin Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Touch-Tone vs. Rotary - A Frustrating Experience Message-ID: Organization: TELECOM Digest Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 332, Message 11 of 13 Lines: 51 What is the percentage in the US these days of telephones with touch-tone capability (on touch-tone-accepting lines) vs rotary phones? Are there now more TT than rotary phones? (If so, any idea when TT passed the 50% mark?) Is this statistic available for residential vs. business lines? (I would venture to guess that the business percentage is far higher than the residential -- maybe business is now 100% Touch-Tone [except for those few areas where TT is not yet available]?) What inspires this is a frustrating experience yesterday calling a company (Rhino Records, at 800-432-0020) from my home, where I have only rotary POTS. I got a voice-mail menu, which said to press 1 for this and 2 for that, or to hold on if one had a rotary phone. I waited through a couple iterations of that noise, and then got a ring signal. However, after it rang six times, another recorded voice came on and said "to return to the operator, press zero". No option was available at that point for someone on a rotary phone! Eventually, another voice said "Thank you" and hung up. I went through this nonsense six times! On the seventh occurrence, I got a "busy" instead of a ring from the sub-menu, or whatever you call it, and thereafter, I got a busy when dialling the 800 number so I just gave up. (An added annoyance was that they don't open up until 9:30 AM Pacific time, so I had to wait until 11:30 Central to even begin this futile process.) Today, at work, from a phone with TT capability, I called again and managed to get to a real operator, after wading thru a couple levels of voice mail menus, and eventually got connected to a real person to whom I explained their problem with the phone-order system. I had had a $75 order I had just about decided to forego, and I emphasized how they were losing business from any and all callers with rotary phones. (Personally, if it was my business and I received such a report from a customer [or ex-customer], I'd rip the damn voice mail system out and go back to having human beings answer directly... :-) But I wonder just what percentage of potential customers are they cutting off with this cruddy system of theirs? Maybe, if rotary usage is so low now, they can afford to ignore that segment of the market. [Interesting thought: I was calling to order vinyl LPs from their close-out sale, because they're terminating those. I woder how well rotary phone usage correlates with the use of LPs vs. CDs. Maybe that's why they didn't get orders for LPs any more -- all us LP enthusiasts still have rotary phones and could never get thru to order any! :-)] Regards, Will wmartin@stl-06sima.army.mil