Airline and hotel customer-service 800 numbers are nearly all automated, and the ones that are the most annoying of late are the voice-activated lines. Voice-activated lines are fine if you are under the “Cone of Silence” and there are no outside noises. But for frequent travelers on the go, background noises make it nearly impossible to use these services — and frustrating, to boot. Case in point: While traveling back to the airport on the car-rental bus, I was trying to check the status and gate of my United Airlines flight. I dialed in and tried to navigate the voice commands, but of course announcements were going over the loudspeaker and other background noises were throwing off the voice-command system. Also, the automated agent would ask questions questions that required an obvious yes or no response, such as “Are you flying today?” I would begin to answer and then would be interrupted by him saying “please answer yes or no.” This would stop me in mid word, having only managed to get out “Yeh …” Amtrak’s famous automated agent “Julie” is the same way. Just try booking a train while walking down 42nd Street; it is impossible. I always try to trump these systems by asking for “agent” or “0” and this seems to work fine most of the time. If you want to talk about outsourcing of airline reservation agents to the Philippines or India … now that’s another blog altogether!  —Fran Gallagher, publisher and CEO