Call Centres - a humourous rant(oid)

[fingal]

This is a slight rant (a 'rantoid'?). I really hate call centres. They seem to dog my life ... Have you ever had the following experience when you've rung one?

<You ring up> 'Hello, thank you for calling Daisy Services. Your call is valuable to us, so to make things easier for you we've created a special menu system. If your enquiry is about your account, press button 1. If you wish to change your account details, press button 2. To speak to a personal advisor, press button 3. To feel suicidal in less than 1 minute, please hold the line.'

<You press button 3> 'Thank you for pressing button 3! To return to the main menu press button 1, to speak to someone in Bangkok who doesn't speak English and has a severe speech impediment, press button 2. To spend the next 15 minutes listening to a string of excuses about why you can't get through (complete with annoying adverts) press button 3.'

<You press button 2> 'Harroh! My rame iz Clive. How're fings in Birmingham? Do you rike swoap operahs? I rike you! I too wive in Birmingham.'

Okay, I'm exaggerating but not all that much! Last month a major utility company managed to:

1. Cancel my gas and electricity accounts without my knowledge.
2. Start sending me bills in the name of a woman I've never met and who has never lived at my address. (I checked ... I haven't had a gender reassignment this year).
3. Get upset and threaten me with a debt collection agency when I refused to pay up.
4. Fail to answer my two 15 minute calls to their 'contact centre', complete with irritating adverts, Muzack and soothing assurances about how much they 'valued my patience'.

Has anyone else had trouble with call centres? Failing that, trouble with tribbles?

[jonantice]

If you ever had one of those free trials of AOL and then tried to cancel it . . . Well, that's enough to traumatize anyone for life.
I was leaving the country and I called and hour and a half before I was to leave for the airport. Didn't get through. So I ended up having to call international to cancel. In addition to all the time it took me to get through to a person it took me like 15 minutes to convince the AOL person that I actually did want to cancel the subscription. Well, they still charged me for like 6 months until I finally figured out that the only way to solve the problem was to give my credit card people a call. They were nice. Aparently AOL does this all the time.

[gtmtnbiker98]

Sounds like my recent experience with Dell technical support, nothing like calling India and talking with "Bob." Yeah, right!

[techieMoe]

Internet Service Providers here in the States are notorious for their call centers. AOL and Comcast are probably the ones I hear about the most. I had a story about my experience all typed up but it ended up being too long. Oh well.

[bigtomrodney]

What is the obsession with choosing really difficult accents? I don't really care where a callcentre is located as long as they provide the service I need. And one other thing - they can communicate. Given the single most important part of their job is understanding and to make understood the conversation why exactly are people with extrememly strong accents or poor language skills hired?

When I ring an Irish company - from Ireland - and with my Irish name - why do I have to say my name six times before the guy gives up and asks me to spell it? A name that could be understood in Ireland. Local knowledge goes a long way. Whether that is through educating the call centre or simply keeping the work inhouse is of know concern to me. I just want to have the service provided in a useable way. The company won't save money if they lost my business.

[Roxoff]

This is a slight rant (a 'rantoid'?). I really hate call centres. They seem to dog my life ... Have you ever had the following experience when you've rung one?

<You ring up> 'Hello, thank you for calling Daisy Services. Your call is valuable to us, so to make things easier for you we've created a special menu system. If your enquiry is about your account, press button 1. If you wish to change your account details, press button 2. To speak to a personal advisor, press button 3. To feel suicidal in less than 1 minute, please hold the line.'

<You press button 3> 'Thank you for pressing button 3! To return to the main menu press button 1, to speak to someone in Bangkok who doesn't speak English and has a severe speech impediment, press button 2. To spend the next 15 minutes listening to a string of excuses about why you can't get through (complete with annoying adverts) press button 3.'

<You press button 2> 'Harroh! My rame iz Clive. How're fings in Birmingham? Do you rike swoap operahs? I rike you! I too wive in Birmingham.'

Okay, I'm exaggerating but not all that much! Last month a major utility company managed to:

1. Cancel my gas and electricity accounts without my knowledge.
2. Start sending me bills in the name of a woman I've never met and who has never lived at my address. (I checked ... I haven't had a gender reassignment this year).
3. Get upset and threaten me with a debt collection agency when I refused to pay up.
4. Fail to answer my two 15 minute calls to their 'contact centre', complete with irritating adverts, Muzack and soothing assurances about how much they 'valued my patience'.

Has anyone else had trouble with call centres? Failing that, trouble with tribbles?

Sounds like you've been buying your energy from Gritish Bas... Never do this, it's almost as bad as buying an internet account from AOL; or your operating system from Microsoft.

It's a shame they always threaten to send the bailiffs round; you do, of course, have a couple of good defences against this.

1. They're obviously billing in the wrong name, so when the baliffs turn up, you just show them your driving license and tell them to bugger off before you call the police for harassing you.

2. Force their hand and make them take you to court. All you have to do then is tell the magistrate that you have the money for the bill for your supplier, you're just waiting for them to resume normal service and actually send you a bill. Oh, and tell the magistrate that you want your costs for this pointless day in court covered. And the cost of therapy (for you, your spouse, your kids, grandmother, etc.) Magistrates are usually quite amenable people in the county court in this position. This particular gas company is always trying to shaft its customers (always make sure you've switched to a reasonable energy company before you get to court tho' - this can take four weeks).

[fingal]

Sounds like you've been buying your energy from Gritish Bas... Never do this, it's almost as bad as buying an internet account from AOL; or your operating system from Microsoft.

Lol yeah! I'm going to change though.

Btw, although I don't have anything to back it up I've heard that Linux is being adopted in some call centres. Not because they love it, but to prevent the staff from playing Quake 3 when they're meant to be working. I heard a radio broadcast about this several months ago.

[techieMoe]

Btw, although I don't have anything to back it up I've heard that Linux is being adopted in some call centres. Not because they love it, but to prevent the staff from playing Quake 3 when they're meant to be working. I heard a radio broadcast about this several months ago.

Well, if they're trying to prevent their staff from playing Quake 3 while working, they obviously didn't do much research on games that are available for the Linux platform... I still remember the joy I had the first time I got Quake 3 running in Redhat 7.

[fingal]

Well, if they're trying to prevent their staff from playing Quake 3 while working, they obviously didn't do much research on games that are available for the Linux platform... I still remember the joy I had the first time I got Quake 3 running in Redhat 7.

Ah yes! Didn't think about that did I?

[easuter]

i had called my ISP on two ocasions because i was not able to share my internet connection AT ALL.
the first time i phoned they said "sir, i'm sorry but we do not provide our customers with networking support"

second time: "if you wan't to share your connection you can use a router. simply plug it into the modem lan port and hook up your other computers."

i had of course already done that, and explained that to the assistant.

the answer i got was: "you can always get a second line installed in your house"
thanks a lot, a second line costs an extra 70€ plus an aditional 20€/month on the bill

after hours of googling i found that comcast's users in the US have a similar problem, and that you need to clone your ethernet card's MAC address to the router wan port in ourder to share the connection.

a very sly way of pushing you into extra spending....