Customer Service in 2025 Sucks (Cellphones)

Go to pay my cell phone (pay per month plan).

"Pay" button on website doesn't work with no discernible error message.

Website provides a chat.

Go through chat bot to get customer service.

Get to human agent.

Get asked to repeat the same information I already reported to the bot (he can't see the full chat log?).

Get asked for my email address and phone number (while I am logged into the account associated with that email address and phone number (why can't he see it?).

This is a typical experience for me when I go to pay for a service online but it is particularly bad with cellphones.

Why are companies paying human customer support to ask questions that the customer has already answered for their bot or that should be autopopulated from customer details they should have in their database?

Why have a stupid bot if it can't do anything useful (like make a payment), and then require the customer to enter the same information twice.

I see this in brick and mortar stores too. I live in a rural area. There is a gas station / convenience store chain. Any hour of the day there is a line at the register and three clerks employed behind the counter but only one register open. It is a frustrating customer experience. The other two are fiddling with the hotdogs or whatever. Does the gas station really sell so many hotdogs to employ a third clerk? Wouldn't it be better to serve the customers by having both registers open?

Or you go to Walmart. The cashier can not figure out how to bag items. The customer in line in front is invariably trying to pay with an non valid / inactive / overdrawn credit card and rather than directing them to the customer service desk the cashier spends 5 minutes trying to figure it out while they swipe their crap card half a dozen times. They finally take another card out and pay for their order meanwhile there are a bunch people in line by now and only two registers open.

Brick and mortar could better compete with online if they trained people better in the apparently lost art of customer service.

Or you go to a store to get something quick 5-10 minutes before closing and the employees have already locked the doors. This was never a problem for me before covid. It used to be businesses wanted business!

I was able to type this whole post while the braindead customer service processed my cellphone payment.