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FOLLOWING our report on 23 February, many readers have told us of another way to defeat those hated “press 1 for this, press 2 for that” automated switchboards. We’re pleased to pass it on. Even if the companies that inflict these systems on us read this column, changing their technology to defeat these tricks will cost them so much time and money they might decide to go back to employing caller-friendly humans instead.

The ploy suggested is to fool the switchboard into thinking you are a technically incompetent Luddite, stuck in a time warp. Ignore all requests to “press the…

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