The Imperfect Community

julymom · Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 3:56 pm Post subject: I HATE outsourcing!!!!!!

I have an HP printer that constantly tells me it's out of paper when it's clearly not (I've serioulsy yelled at it telling it that there is plenty of paper in the tray). It finally just stopped printing due to the "out of paper" business, so I called tech support. After talking to about 5 agents (somewhere in India) and explaining the same story over and over and over I got to someone who walked me through all the trouble shooting steps and finally decided I needed a cleaing kit (provided by HP at no charge to me) and it would be delivered the next day via FedEx (though they couldn't give me a tracking number). It was supposed to arrive Fri. As of Mon it still wasn't here, so I called back. Again I was transferred and transferred and transferred and had to explain the story every time I was transferred. I was getting very frustrated. One of the agents I absolutely could not understand. His accent was so thick I could't make heads of tails of what he was saying, other than he kept asking me what part I ordered. I finally told him I couldn't understand him that he needed to transfer me to someone else. I felt bad about this, but I was about to bang my head against the wall in frustration. I got to someone I could understand (and who could understand me) and was promised the cleaning kit would come today (though he couldn't figure out what happened to the first one). Well, guess what? FedEx ran and no kit! I called tech support AGAIN, where I got the same run around (only transferred twice this time though). The agent assured me I would get the kit tomorrow, but I'm not holding my breath. I'm pretty sure I'll be buying a new printer tomorrow.
It's so frustrating though when you call and your agent is "David" or "Kevin" or "Michael" and they don't understand you nor you them. I just want to talk to a native English speaker who understands when I say "My cleaning kit didn't arrive."

prescott · Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 4:08 pm Post subject:

I can totally relate. A while back I attempted to speak to someone at my local bank branch -- the call was routed through a call center, where I had to go through their flowchart of scripted questions before they would agree to transfer me. When they finally did, no one picked up. Customer service by phone has taken a definite turn for the worse.

You may get a kick out of this:

http://www.fanpop.com/spots/viral-videos/links/6738

julymom · Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 6:58 pm Post subject:

That was hilarious! Thanks for the giggle. You made my day a little bit better. Stupid call centers!

mammaX3_MOD · Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 8:12 pm Post subject:

What I hate are the computer-automatic call menus where they make you say your selection. I have kids and they're always in my ear shouting, fucking up the call. It ends up telling me in it's computer voice:
"For appointment scheduling, please say appointments, now. Sorry. There is no selection for Mom. Can. You. Turn. On. Dora. The. Explorer. Please try again."

snuffles · Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 9:21 pm Post subject:

Mammax3 -

I wish that instead of having the "Press 1 for English. Press 2 for Spanish" prompt, they would have a prompt that says "Please choose the person you can understand best" prompt. And the call center person should have like a voice mail thing that says "Hi, you've reached Rebecca at ABC Trucking." (Obviously thier name and company)This way you could actually hear them say a sentence and hear their accent. I came from NY and still have the accent, but where I live they have more of a country accent and there are times when I can't understand them, and they can't understand me. When I'm trying to do business, I don't want to spend half my time worrying about the situation and the other half worrying if I'm going to offend someone if I keep telling them I don't understand what they're saying, or asking them to repeat themselves.

prescott · Posted: Wed Feb 07, 2007 11:45 am Post subject:

I find for me it's usually not a problem of understanding the accent, but the fact that they are in a 3rd party call center and have *no clue* about the business they are representing outside of a handbook. If the issues I have that require a phone call fit neatly into the parameters of a pre-determined script, I probably wouldn't need to call in the first place.