Sometimes our politicians have good ideas that do not work. Because I am a disabled vet, I work with the VA. You may have heard that the VA had problems getting many kinds of things done in a timely manner. Our politicians decided that it would be best if the VA turned over some of those problems to private industry because they could do a better job. In my case, the private industry seems to be doing worse than the VA did. Yesterday, I got a Robocall telling me that I had an examination coming up, but the information as to where it was and what time was so garbled I couldn’t make sense out of it. I had the telephone number of the company, LHI, so I called them. They have an automated system answering the phone. It asked for my identifying information, and I punched it in using the keypad on the phone. The system announced I didn’t exist! I know I exist, so I keyed it once more and got the same answer – I didn’t exist. I tried calling again, but this time my goal was to speak to a human. First, I thought I would not key in the information they asked for and see if I would be connected to a human. The system just hung up on me. I remembered that keying in a zero sometimes gets an operator. I called back once again. I keyed in the zero and was promptly told it was an invalid response. While I was trying to figure out what to do next, the system hung up on me. I was a little frustrated, but I was going to beat this machine and figure out a way to talk to a human. I called back again, but this time I just keyed in three random digits. The machine replied that it didn’t understand my response. I figured we were even as I didn’t understand its response. I finally won because after a couple more passes with random digits, it finally told me it would connect me to human. The lady was very helpful and immediately found my information and said that I could get all of it online on their website. Not trusting their machinery, I had her give me the information I needed and I carefully wrote it down. She was very understanding and seemed to imply she knew their automated system didn’t always work. I thanked her and hung up. Just out of curiosity, I went to their website and keyed in the information they asked for. Once again, I didn’t exist!
I started out saying that the politicians thought the private industry could do a better job. I put my request in May 2018. Counting on my fingers, that was eight months ago. The farthest the VA was ever behind for this type of request was six months. Politicians are even more frustrating than automated systems because you can eventually you can get automated systems to do what you want. Not true of politicians!
