Tore (aishira) wrote in bad_service,
Tore
aishira
bad_service

Call Centers

EDIT: I'm sorry I even brought it up. And that's sincerity, not sarcasm. If I'd realized there would be so much debate over it, I would have kept it to myself. Thanks to the people who have agreed with me, apologies to the people who didn't. I don't think I'll be posting here anymore either. It's not worth all the negative energy and bickering.

--

And for the sake of having a bad service in my post:

Does anyone else think that it's terribly bad service for call centers to employee people whose first language is NOT the language they're going to be working with, and not bother to try and teach them the language at all? I'm not saying that these companies should pull out of foreign countries, but it makes things really frustrating for the customer when they can't understand what the hell the call agent is saying.

Example, I got a call from MBNA (Mastercard) yesterday. As is usually, the girl who called me was foreign with a very thick accent - I think she was Indian, but don't quote me on that, as I'm bad with accents. Point being, I tried and tried and tried for almost ten minutes and I could not figure out what the hell she wanted. She was being polite and everything (um...I think), but out of every ten words she spoke I may have caught one. I told her I was having a hard time understanding and she slowed down, but it didn't help at all. If I didn't know better, I'd swear to God that she was speaking her own language and just throwing an English word in every now and then. Eventually I had to say, "Look, I'm really sorry, but I'm having problems with your accent and can't figure out what you're saying so can you please just take me off the call list?" (I'd be meaning to get this done since they call me WAY too often trying to sell me crap I don't want.) I'm FAIRLY certain that she agreed and I managed to catch the words "good day" before she hung up.

All and all I just thought it was ridiculous. I mean, she was obviously TRYING, I'll give her that, but it was also obvious that she hadn't received a whole lot of English training. It makes me mad because it's disrespectful to both the customer AND the foreign agents. I bet nine times out of ten, when that girl calls someone and they can't understand her, she either gets hung up on or yelled at because so many people just don't have the patience for that stuff (or are jerks).
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    I want to change to sprint so I contacted them via phone. Here’s what happened and why Them: you can join for 200.00 Me: that’s a lot of money your…

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