I miss being able to get customer service from people who speak English.

[LeftyMom]

I can barely communicate on the phone as it is (I don't hear well) and choppy transcontinental connections and thick accents do not help. Also, I never used to have to tell people on the phone what state Sacramento is in. Between the stupid questions and all my "can you repeat that?" my calls to companies that outsource take longer and leave me pissed off.

[Zorra]

1. I think this drives everyone nuts, and it is very rude for companies to subject

customers to this type of frustration.

[derby378]

2. "Please to hold line while I are your account be accessing..."

The worst part is when he says he's "Gerald from Houston, Texas" and he sounds like the cousin Borat never talks about.

[Redstone]

3. LM, what the fuck?

Could you send me a PM, please?

Redstone

[LeftyMom]

5. Done.

:hi:

[Gormy Cuss]

4. SacraMento is in the Candy Isles

(n.b. aisle misspelled intentionally)


Try telling poorly trained overseas customer service people that you live in Maine...."Main? Mainland?"

[ChoralScholar]

6. !!!! Of all the narrow-minded, xenophobic.....!!!!!!

yeah... me too.

:D

Did your Thanksgiving finally turn out okay?

[LeftyMom]

7. Yes and no.

It was okay. flvegan didn't make it. He's still trying to fly out.

[ChoralScholar]

8. I sorry, LM.

I hope it gets worked out.

[LeftyMom]

9. We're working on it.

The hope is that he can be here tomorrow before I get off of work.

[Dulcinea]

10. Same here.

My MIL suffers from Alzheimer's, & when we had to put her in a nursing home, I canceled her credit cards. Well, I called Penney's, spoke to someone God knows where who told me that only the cardholder could cancel the card. After attempting to explain the situation for about 10 minutes, I finally called back, pretended I was my MIL, & managed to cancel the card, but still was subjected to the whole spiel of "if you change your mind, we will be happy to assist you in getting another card."

There is no decent customer service anymore. Why can't we speak to someone for whom English is a first or second language, not a hobby?

[billyskank]

11. Because people who speak English as their first language are too expensive

Really we must all learn to work for less otherwise how will the corporations maintain their profit margins?

It's all our own fault for being paid too much.

[Crazy Dave]

16. I don't get it though

There can't really be much of a profit margin to gain based on outsourcing customer and technical support alone. Take these large companies like Sprint who have tens of thousands of local employees and distributors nationwide. What could the percentage in savings actually be annually for hiring a few hundred employees overseas out of their overall revenue? Probably less than 0.01%. Sure, even that's a lot when you have the revenue as a company like Sprint does and of course it adds up in the long term. It just doesn't seem like it adds up enough to work for me though. Then again I'm not a greedy board member.
I once heard that in manufacturing autos in Mexico versus America the savings were less than 4% but that was data from over ten years ago.

[Crazy Dave]

17. Penney's credit cards suck!

Someone had fraudulently used my mom's Penney's card number and ran up thousands of dollars in fraudulent charges. Of course the people on the phone told her she was responsible (not sure if the have to hold to the same federal banking laws that limit liability to $50) and that they would ruin her credit and put her in jail if she didn't pay. I told mom it's easy for someone to say that anonymously over a phone but let's go to the store's customer service counter and see if they have the nerve to say that to someone's face. Needless to say the outcome was more favorable but they still reported it to the credit bureaus which was another major annoyance she had to fix.

[Skittles]

12. HONESTLY I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT

unless you work in an industry where you are required EVERY DAY AT WORK to talk to people overseas who now have your coworkers' jobs, I cannot sympathize. You only do it once in a while - I TALK TO THEM SOMETIMES TWENTY TIMES A NIGHT......OMG THE STORIES I COULD TELL.

[Deja Q]

13. I know people who deal with it all the time.

It hasn't changed their minds either. :(

Still, last I gathered IBM is finding a way to teach 'em better English. (funny, that. American republican politicians talk of private education and all, and their corporate buddies are giving public education... just not in America.)

[Skittles]

19. it's not just English that is the problem

outsourcing is just wrong, wrong, WRONG

[Orsino]

22. And the odd thing is...

...that it happens stateside, too. I can't count the times I've called a customer to try to work out what's really wrong with his Internet connection, and he says, "Let me put my tech guy on the phone," leaving me to work with an ESL student.

It drives my coworkers crazy. I don't mind so much, except for what it says about the state of education and business in America.

[Crazy Dave]

14. I've only had one english speaking person in over 2 years

As in english I mean as their native language. Sirius satellite radio has call centers in Canada and that's the one I'm referring to. I used to live in what was the call center capital of the United States a long time ago. Omaha, NE used to have hundreds of call centers from companies nation wide. The claim was that mid-west accents were the easiest for everyone to understand and here's something that you'll never see again....the call center employees actually worked for the same companies the represented. You used to get a little more pride and helpfulness when companies had their own in house customer and technical support.

[Deja Q]

15. Quite.

And the obvious downside here is loyalty. Lack of it. I fear the corporate sect will eventually be hoisted by their own petard. They are still seen as Americans, even if they are doling out the jobs.

[sbj405]

18. Yes, it's not only the outsourced ones. I have quite a bit of trouble with

many of the native speaking reps here in the US due to heavy accents or poor command of the English language.

[Skittles]

20. LM, sorry

in ref to my above post I DO sympathize with the hearing problem, absolutely. Sorry, I get so incensed with my dealings with the offshore folk I lose perspective :o

[xchrom]

21. my dad died oct 28 -- since then i've been on the phone

dealing with the final insurance business -- getting the names changed on accounts.

well -- it's not so much that i've had trouble with the english thing -- but damn it -- all the security hoops i've had to jump through -- and that stuff is all in india for fucks sake.

india!!!

all the security information for these accounts yours, mine, etc -- are held off fucking shore.

[EFerrari]

24. We're supposed to be alert for identity theft and the vendors

we deal with have lathered our information all over the world. :crazy:

[xchrom]

25. oh it's just nutty.

one tries to be -- what, reasonably? -- aware of identity theft -- but really how can we be?

as you pointed out -- it's ''lathered'' everywhere and it's very, very disheartening.

[SeattleGirl]

23. Drives me nuts too. I have nothing against people from different

ethnicities coming here, trying to get work for themselves, but it drives me bonkers to have a conversation that consists primarily of "Huh?" "What" "Could you repeat that?" "I'm sorry, I didn't understand you."

[NewJeffCT]

26. My experience has actually been fairly positive - so far

believe it or not...

I've had to call on my DSL service several times (SBC Yahoo), and the Indian person on the other line has been able to solve my problem quickly & efficiently.

[Kali]

27. If you get really "firm" with them and spend a couple hours

you will eventually be returned to the US and after a few more transfers that person will finally be able to actually DO something about your problem. It takes real dedication to get actual "customer service".