Grrrr!! A Rant, sorry

[Kevenswife2]

I hope I don't offend anyone but why do these places hire those who speak English as a second language to handle their customer service by phone?

This is not the first time I've gone through this. I call to cancel and I can't understand them because of their very heavy accent. This time I tried turning the volume up on my handset and that didn't help.

And why can't they take "no" for an answer? I was asked why I was canceling (it made me nausous) and then they offer me another month at a discounted price. Guess that has nothing to do with their accent but it all added up to a very frustrating experience and I finally just hung up...which I never do because now I have to go through it all over again .

Like I said, I'm very sorry if I offended anyone. Hey, I even have a very hard time understanding my Korean sister-in-law. She's lived in the US for over 20 years and STILL has a very heavy accent and a hard time finding the right word for some things...but I love her.

Thanks for letting me rant! I feel much better now...until I have to call the place back.

 

[lnh'smom]

I know how you feel. I work at a jewelery store and my coworker and I were standing there and this lady came up and was talking to my coworker. She kept talking to my coworker in Spanish. She finally said in English, don't you speak spanish? My coworker said, no, I live in America. I am all for the melting pot, but come on, speak ENGLISH HERE!

 

[bunnyfoo]

I feel your pain. I was recently trying to make some changes to a flight for one of my managers and the airline had apparently moved their call center to India. While the operators were able to speak English, it was very difficult to understand them ... not to mention that there was a slight delay on the line and the operators were reading from pre-scripted answers. Very frustrating indeed.

 

[crazymomof4]

The most frustrating times for me is when the heavy accent is combined with another "language" barrier..............technology!
When I have problems with my Verizon DSL and I call tech support, 99% of the time I get a person with a heavy accent. As they are helping me, they are using terms that are part of "computer-speak" and somewhat unfamiliar to me. When they say these words with the thick accent -the fact that it is over the phone doesn't help either- I cannot for the life of me figure out what they are saying. I have to keep asking them to repeat and they repeat, but not any more clearly. There have been times when I've actually had to ask them to spell a word out. Even though I ask in a tactful way, they seem to get annoyed at ME bc. I am not understanding them. I think that is what gets under my skin the most-- when they act like I'm some kind of moron bc. I'm not understanding them.
PS- I come from 1st generation European immigrants- ALL of my relatives have accents- so I'm not a bigot.

 

[pth]

I spent just over 1 hour with HP yesterday over an issue with a bad power cord for my printer. If I was speaking to someone in the US, I would have had it resolved in about 10 minutes. That's over 50 minutes of my life wasted trying to communicate with someone overseas.

 

[dementia412]

A cell phone company lost my buisness because of that issue. I have a hard enough time understanding people from this country... I called about a change of address made after I applied for the phone, and it took me almost half an hour to get it changed... I didn't even have the phone yet, and decided I really didn't want to deal with that again just to accept my phone a few days later. Why don't they get that over a phone the mildly hard to understand accent become nearly impossible to understand?

 

[gdulaney]

I hope I don't offend anyone but why do these places hire those who speak English as a second language to handle their customer service by phone?

Because outsourcing your call center to another country is a huge cost savings measure.... It's not just computer support, cell phone support or technology support either.... other industries are starting to do it too.

Ginny

 

[bumbershoot]

Because outsourcing your call center to another country is a huge cost savings measure.... It's not just computer support, cell phone support or technology support either.... other industries are starting to do it too.

Ginny

What's funny is that in my last year at Amazon.com, I was part of a team answering email messages for Amazon.co.uk. Had to spell things differently, use different words, and so on. It was cheaper to pay Americans to work while the UK slept, than it was to pay the Belfast reps to work overnight.

Since I WAS an outsourcer, I don't complain about other jobs outsourcing anymore.

Then again, I really hated re-answering questions for .com customers that were previously addressed (can't say "answered") by our reps in Daksh, India. Those reps took quite awhile to get up to speed with reading the whole email and answering each part of it. Though the same could be said for 70% of my US-based colleagues hired after our big group (after which time amazon's CS started to go downhill overall)...

 

[GofFreak]

Oh How I can relate!

Chin up! Your the boss and its your MONEY!