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Feb 26, 2007 4:42 pm US/Pacific
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Phone Services Promise To Help Consumers
by Jeanette Pavini
(CBS 5)
Who hasn't waited on hold seemingly forever for customer service? You don't have to. One among a host of free phone services for consumers promises to connect you with human help in a fraction of the time.
"Your call will be answered in approximately 20 minutes."
How many times have you heard that? A new service called No Phone Trees promises to save you that long wait for customer service.
"We will call that company, navigate their automated response system -- or, their phone tree, as we like to call them -- and once we are in the queue and waiting for a human to come on, we connect them back to the consumer," said company co-founder Clement Wang.
Gina Hughes of Yahoo! Tech checked it out.
Instead of a 20-minute wait, she had a person on the line in just over a minute.
Right now there are about 170 companies on the No Phone Trees list, including airlines, banks, hotels, and mobile phone companies.
Another new service is called 1-800-FREE411.
"If you dial 411 on your phone, you are going to get a $2 charge every time," Hughes said.
With 1-800-FREE411, you have to sit through a 15-second ad before getting your information and sometimes the voice recognition is less than perfect.
"If the service has problems understanding what you're saying, there are live operators, which is great because at least you can connect and not waste your time repeating yourself to an automated system," Hughes said.
We also tried out Frucall.
You dial in a UPC code, and this free service compares prices for electronics, DVDs, books and other items at 150 online stores.
For a 46-inch Sony LCD television, the store price of $3,399 was $150 more than the cheapest web price, which included shipping.
So for some shoppers, Frucall might work as a bargaining tool.
"You can go to your retailer and say 'I can actually get it for $50 less. Want to work with me on this?,' " said Frucall's Antony Milner.
(© MMVII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)