Congressman's Schrader's Telephone Town Hall is Buggy

I just finished listening to Congressman Kurt Schrader's (my congressional rep here in Salem) telephone town hall. I have no idea how it went for the rest of the people, but I was frustrated beyond belief.

I was told I would be called several minutes before 7 pm, but was instead called at 7:06 pm after the town hall had already started. If there were any instructions at the beginning, then I missed them. I punched in the keys to be placed in a queue for questions, then waited the entire remaining fifty-four minutes (God forbid that the "meeting" should go over the allotted 1 hour) while a malfunctioning recorded voice would break in between the questions and answers every 45 seconds with "press the th-th-th-th-th key now." I hit the pound key several times (I heard the word "pound" in there once-- and I seriously mean once) which had absolutely no discernible effect on anything. I never talked to an operator, nor any human being. The constant automated interruptions made it almost impossible to follow the questions and answers, and I learned next to nothing from the whole technically incompetent affair.

While refusing to meet with his constituents face-to-face, Schrader and his people were unable to demonstrate even the most basic technical abilities to set-up and handle a touch tone phone menu. Local talk radio shows (which I have never called in to-- to be fair) seem to run things better than this. And he wants us to believe that Congress should handle our health care insurance... This experience does not fill me with confidence.

NOTE: You may notice that the post time of this entry is 7:56pm-- 4 minutes before the town hall was over. This is because after 50 minutes of "th-th-th-th-th key now" I opened up the "new post" to write about my experience, which means this entry was time-stamped at that moment. I stayed with the "town hall" till the end and did not begin writing until after I hung up after its conclusion.