Cingularly interesting

Today when calling to cancel a phone account I arrived at a fork in the voice menu path where I had to declare my reason for calling. Once it was confirmed that I wanted to cancel the line would transfer and then after a short wait I would be informed that the system was experiencing difficulties and that I should call back later. Yet, if I called in and declared some other reason — billing question, for instance — I got right through to an agent. I tried this three times and each time when I wanted to cancel (and I used slightly different terms each time) the system was experiencing difficulty. That just seems too baldly nefarious to be believable, but there it is. And no you can’t cancel an account online. That’s be way too easy.

Oh, and when did voice menu systems go from passionless monotone to Katie Couric chirpy? I’ll take robo-operator any day.