Recently, the Nuu-nuu's battery has gotten flaky. Eventually rechargeable batteries will stop being able to hold as much charge as they once did, and the time has come to replace the power pack. I ordered a replacement battery pack from iRobot, but was notified (by email) after I'd placed the order that the battery was on backorder.

Then, a few weeks later, I received another email telling me that there is no expected ship date for the battery. This email encouraged me to call their customer support number to cancel the order; if I did nothing then they'd just hang on to the order and fulfill it whenever they did get a battery.

I want the robot to work, so I called the number. My plan was to see if they've got another battery that I could use.

There is no human being on the other end of the line. iRobot has outsourced their call center to a robot voice navigation phone tree. You can't press 1 to continue, you have to say words. But the robot can't recognize the words that I said.

In frustration, I used the web form to send a note to iRobot customer service. I described my problem. They responded with an email. The email suggested that I call the phone number that I'd called before.

You know, the Roomba doesn't have smarts. It just keeps flailing around in the room until it runs out of power or stumbles onto its home base. iRobot seems to assume that their customers have nothing better to do than to flail around at their support options.