iPhone In Action – Dial Zero
By 
Here’s the setup- back in July I had a total failure of my 500 GB backup harddrive. OUCH!
Fortunately after a total meltdown last fall I had created a redundancy system so very little of my data was actually lost. I called the company that makes the hard drive and, since it was only a few months old, they told me to send it to them. They promised to attempt to do a full data recovery but, if that did not work, they said they would at least fix or replace the drive.
I shipped it out and went on vacation.
Yesterday I realized I had never gotten the drive back. I called the company but they could not find a record of my having sent it. Fortunately I (or more accurately my super-organize wife) had a copy of the shipping receipt. Since it was insured I knew I could find out where it had landed and then figure out how to have it fixed or replace.
Now I don’t know if you have ever tried to phone a real live person at the US Postal Service but it is close to impossible.
The voice mail maze must have been developed by an expert in torture as there is little that can make you wish someone would put you out of your misery more than it.
Prepared for it to take forever to speak to someone (as it did the last time I had to call), I was about to dial the main number when I remembered that I had downloaded and installed Dial Zero app on my iPhone. I fired up the app, searched for, and found, the entry for the USPC and, thanks to the instructions there, was speaking to a live person in mere seconds. Amazing.
Unfortunately, the woman I spoke to was no help whatsoever. Thanks to Dial Zero, though, at least it didn’t take me an hour to find that out.
