Okay, you know how whenever you called a technical support line or a 1-800 for a company or gov’t office and you get the recorded voice telling to press different buttons on your phone to get the service you want or to speak to a person. Now usually they say something like please stay on the line to speak with an operator. Lately when calling these numbers I’ve noticed that this doesn’t work, the message just starts over again and you need to press “00” on most systems. What do people with rotary phones do when they need to call these numbers?
They listen in frustration.
Those answering systems rely on the tonal responses generated by the caller’s telephone to direct his call the next tier properly. Since rotary phones are incapable of generating these specific tones, users of such cannot access such answering systems. Generally. The caveat here is that some answering systems might possibly be configured to accept the pulses that rotary phones send out in lieu of tones. But I rather doubt such a thing is in common use since rotary phones are ancient technology.
I suppose you could always try what they show in those Citibank commercials, where the person is trying to imitate the correct beep.
Boooop…
Beeeeeppp…
Biiiip…
“Thank you. Please hold.”
That’s not entirely true. Of course, rotary phones themselves cannot generate the necessary DTMF tones, as you say. However, there are devices like this which allow user of rotary phones to access IVR systems.
With some of these systems, there is a magic word (sometimes agent, operator or help) that if spoken will get you transferred to a live operator. Some of the systems let you say the number of your selection instead of pressing the buttons. (I think United Airlines has this.)