I get quite frustrated trying to be on hold with an agent to book the award (US Airways, I’m looking at you). Something I had originally stumbled upon but not really explored is gethuman.com.

When it first launched several years ago, it just provided a list of all the options for the automated system to get a agent/representative on the line as fast as possible. But for a while they’ve partnered with lucyphone, which is really cool. What this means is that you don’t have to listen to the diverse and often annoying call center hold music. But also I’m sure it frees up your mind’s processing power to work on other tasks because you don’t have to be listening on the phone for an agent to pick up. You’ll get a call when there is an agent, so there is no waiting!

This is how it works:

Go to gethuman.com. The website looks something like this:

You can search up the airlines that you want and the search will automatically populate if they have the airline in their database. Click through and you get to this screen. You want them to call you, so click the “they call you instead” button.

Click that and a window will open for you to enter your phone number.

From a simple google search for their privacy policy, they do collect your phone number, but they agree to keep it confidential. I’m not sure whether you are okay with but I am. Of course everyone’s level of giving their phone number away will be different so you call at your own risk. I’m fairly comfortable giving them only my phone number (and nothing else) because even if they have my number I don’t think they can get my name or any other personal information. For the complete privacy policy you can check here.

Then click “call me back” and you’ll get this screen.

At any point you can choose to join in the call but then you’ll still be listening to hold music.  You will need to enter a real Canadian or American number for you to get a call back, and once an agent is on the line the online widget will call you instantly, which is really really awesome. I can’t say that enough. The tradeoff is giving away your phone number, but for me I have no problem with giving it to them, so in my opinion it’s definitely a great option to consider cutting down the annoyance factor when you’re booking an award that requires calling such as with some if not most partner awards depending on the program, which really does kick in if you’re spending at least an hour if not more to get to a US Airways agent… 😛

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