When I moved from New York City to Washington DC three months ago, I had to call cable and utility companies to cancel the services to my old apartment and fix the Internet service in the new one.

It was both time-consuming and painful. Each time I called, I was greeted by an automatic answering system that tried to navigate me to a solution. When that failed, I hit the button for a customer service representative. That was when the real pain started. All the representatives, I was told, were currently busy and the estimated waiting time was 18 minutes in one case and 32 minutes in another.

I sank into despair once when the phone was cut off accidentally after it had waited for nearly 15 minutes accompanied by service promotion ads and monotonous music from the other end. At that moment, I did miss my bank and utility companies in China where customer representatives seem always readily available.