Surf's Up - How to speed up those automated phone services

We love this guy.  He has spent endless hours on our behalf working out the 'press 1 for ....' combinations so we don't have to.  If you want to speak to your bank, insurance company, online retailer,etc. and they have an automated message service which requires you to select from one of several options, you can visit his website www.pleasepress1.com and he'll give you the numbers to press, saving you time listening to all the alternatives.

He still has local councils to tackle and is looking to the general public for help as councils seem to be the worst culprits but there are too many for him to handle alone.  So if you want to help this good samaritan in his work, give him a call.  I promise he doesn't have an automated service!

All images (c) pleasepress1

Here's a bit from the man himself, Nigel Clarke, about what motivated him to set up this website.

Whether calling my phone, insurance or energy company, they each had a different and often worse way of trying to "help" me. I could sit there for minutes that seemed like ours, trying to get through their phone menus only to end up at the wrong place and having to redial and start again !  I once took nearly 3 minutes to go through 7 levels of menus, only for a robot voice to tell me they were closed !

What really annoyed me was that I had bought a product or service from them but, now they had me as a customer they didn't care - they were wasting my time making me to work through a maze of menu options in the hope that I might eventually get to speak to someone who could help me.

Was this making life easy for me or for the company ?   Did this show they cared about keeping me as a 'happy' customer ?  Was this the 'customer experience' they wanted me to have ?
Or were they deliberately trying to stall me on the phone and make more money out of me from the premium rate number I was calling ?

We thank you Nigel for starting the ball rolling with this.