NationStates Jolt Archive

So: Who here likes talking to someone they've never met on the phone about a problem that no one else seems to understand?

Not me.

I spent four hours on the phone today alone trying to convince the people who I bought my laptop from that they sent me the wrong one. Which they did. I finally got through to them, but I don't even know if it was worth it.

Share your horror stories!

3...2...1...GO.

Rule Number 1 of Call Center: You don't talk about call center.

let me guess....Dell?

I can tell you far too many stories about call centres...but as I want a decent nights sleep I won't ;)

I work in a low volume government services call centre.Hell at least it lets me on NS all day and the pay aint too bad at about €2400 a month..It does get very boring though.Only talked to three people in 8 hours yesterday.

The callcenter of the German Telekom, which I now only refer to as the German Terrorkom.

A monkey could do a better job than those working there!

Paypal. So many problems with that company.

My favorite:
Call #1: I talked to someone about setting up a paypal account for a friend who had cancer to raise $$. He said I could fill it out with all incorrect info and have him/family change it when they wanted. I didn't want to know anything they put in the account because they use name/address/ ect to verify acct info if you call them.

So I fill it out with the person's name being Jack Bastard and the company being Recycle Your Body Organs. I went on to create the donation button (the reason they couldn't do it themselves). After all was said and done I figured I should change the name from Jack Bastard to something more appropriate. I found it funny, but I wasn't sure his parents would.

Lo and behold I can't change the name. I call paypal, get someone else, who tells me I have to fax something to them on "company letterhead" explaining this person doesn't "work for the company" anymore.

...

Fastforward hours of arguing and three seperate phone calls to hopefully get someone else on the phone.

...

In the end I scrawled in crayon some "Company Letterhead" (complete with leatherface cut and pasted onto it) and faxed it in. [I know it was immature, but I was pissed at wasting hours with them] Whoever reads the faxes at least owned a brain, they called me back and told me they'd change the name to whatever I wanted. They seemed a little dismayed that the customer service people didn't have common sense. They also found my "letterhead" amusing.

EDIT: My official email address for my paypal account is paypalisirritating@*******

The callcenter of the German Telekom, which I now only refer to as the German Terrorkom.

A monkey could do a better job than those working there!
Indeed, other ISPs are hardly better however. With one difference, connection problems solve themselves on the hotline magically:

*15 minutes of music*

Z: RegionalISP, *mumble, how can I help you?
me: I can not get online.
*Standard questions*
Z: what is the error-message?
me: timeout waiting for PADO-packages.
Z: You are not using our software?
me: Your software doesn't even have a 64-bit version, much less a 64-bit version for my OS.
Z: You are using Mac OS?
me: Linux
Z: We don't support Linux.
me: I'm 90% sure this is on your end.
Z: You can not get online with Linux!
me: I was, and until the latest 12-hour reconnect, it was running fine!
Z: You can not get online with Linux!
me: Oh, apparently pppoe now managed to connect, have a nice day!

My friend on his last day working for 411 directory assistance

Him: "what city is that in sir?"
Illiterate Man: "Its (Some Native American Name)"
Him: "How do you spell that?"
Illiterate Man: "What do you mean how do you spell that you should know how to spell it!!!!!"
Him: "I see, get a f'ing education and call back then"

Next Caller

Woman: "I HAVE CALLED HERE NINE TIMES!"
Him: "Please call a tenth"

So: Who here likes talking to someone they've never met on the phone about a problem that no one else seems to understand?.

Me. Mostly because within 10 seconds I can find out if that person is Indian and I can chit chat about stuff. :p

I hear ya, though it annoys me when they try and fake a "local" accent. Probably more than a little bit because they can be pretty damn good at it.

Being Indian, I consider myself pretty versed in "indian accents"...boy am I wrong.

I used to work in a call center. Boy, was that some fun times. Especially when the dirty pranksters called asking me if I liked to masturbate LMAO.

I hear ya, though it annoys me when they try and fake a "local" accent. Probably more than a little bit because they can be pretty damn good at it.

Being Indian, I consider myself pretty versed in "indian accents"...boy am I wrong.

It usually goes like this

Him/Her : Hello Mr.xxx ....My name is <some western name like Tom / Anna etc> we are calling you for blah blah

Me: Arre yaar sahi naam bathao na. (Buddy tell me your real name)

And usually I can figure out pretty quick if that person is Tamil or Telugu or Malayali or Hindi speaker (I speak those) and I would be having fun talking in those languages....lol...catching up with stuff back there...

But nowadays most callers do give their real Indian names.

So: Who here likes talking to someone they've never met on the phone about a problem that no one else seems to understand?

Not me.

I spent four hours on the phone today alone trying to convince the people who I bought my laptop from that they sent me the wrong one. Which they did. I finally got through to them, but I don't even know if it was worth it.

Share your horror stories!

3...2...1...GO.
I had users that insisted that they were right. so I trudge up to them, do what I tell them to do and it works. their response? "we tried that, you must've done something different." :rolleyes:

i've delt w/ symantec support before... man, their # is hard to find if you don' than thatt have it handy... but other than that, they seemed capable and helped me pretty fast.

AOL customer service is a horror story. I spent 6 hours with them once, trying to get my broadband working. I talked to three people, the last of whom was from India and spoke imperfect English with a thick accent, I had to have her repeat herself 5 or 6 times before I could get what she was trying to tell me. Finally, she acknowledged that the problem was AOL's, said they would fix it from her end, but it would probably be a few hours and then turned me over to some idiot who tried to sell me something. They never did fix it, I ended up using dial up for several months and finally convinced them that since I wasn't getting broadband, I shouldn't pay for it. Needless to say, I don't use AOL anymore.

Finally, a chance to complain about my most recent encounter with such people: Sony Online Entertainment.

As most of you are unaware of, I spent a while as an EverQuest player. I later cancelled my account, though I did purchase ONE three month period of service for a friend as a gift. I emphasize one because that is what I was lead to believe I was being charged for.

Surprise surprise, a couple weeks ago I'm checking my online banking service records as usual since I'm jobless at the moment and need to save all the money I've got, when I see a charge from SOE of 41.17, the amount they charge for a three month period of service. This, of course, pissed me off. I spent a great deal of time just getting my credit card information off of their records for that account, and have been interacting with them since then up until today trying to get a refund for my 41 dollars. I can't, however, since I don't have any e-mail from them about a cancelled account, because I never got anything of the sort from anyone there at all when I cancelled my account back in October OR when I got my information removed from this other account. So because they "require" such proof, I'm not going to get my refund, which pisses me the fuck off because I really needed to hold onto all the money I've got right now.

It usually goes like this

Him/Her : Hello Mr.xxx ....My name is <some western name like Tom / Anna etc> we are calling you for blah blah

Me: Arre yaar sahi naam bathao na. (Buddy tell me your real name)

And usually I can figure out pretty quick if that person is Tamil or Telugu or Malayali or Hindi speaker (I speak those) and I would be having fun talking in those languages....lol...catching up with stuff back there...

But nowadays most callers do give their real Indian names.

See, I only understand Gujarati, and can't speak a single indian language fluently. Even the few words and sentences I DO know in Guju end up horribly mangled by my Jersey accent.

I also tend to be in enough of a hurry that I can't chat with telemarketers. I know "you're" doing "your" jobs, but that doesn't mean I have to be friendly, just that I should be polite

Here's more of the abovementioned company:

So they sent me this letter yesterday stating that I could get a free update of my internet connection speed. No strings, no extra costs attached.

Great!

All I'd need is my phone number and my customer number says the letter - just type it into the form provided on the mentioned webpage and it will be done.

Or so they think.

The webpage they gave me doesn't even have a place where to put my customer number, but when I enter my phone number (like I'm supposed to do), they check my connection speed and - surprise - they tell me I don't have DSL (while I'm connected with the internet! :confused: ).

Anyway, I called those dolts yesterday and today and will have a 33% increase in connection speed next week. :D (Again, I should mention "Or so they say".)

AOL customer service is a horror story.

Don't even get me started on AOL. My MIL used to have AOL, mainly for her husband, until she cancelled it - after he died. The account was in his name, but she paid for it and had it deducted automatically from her account. So she called to cancel.

They wanted to talk to the account holder. No matter how many times she explained it, they would not understand that the account holder was dead. She had to jump through hoops to get the dumb thing cancelled. It was absolutely ridiculous and I've vowed since never to use AOL again (though Time Warner, the other half of the company, has never given me any problems.)

Finally, a chance to complain about my most recent encounter with such people: Sony Online Entertainment.

As most of you are unaware of, I spent a while as an EverQuest player. I later cancelled my account, though I did purchase ONE three month period of service for a friend as a gift. I emphasize one because that is what I was lead to believe I was being charged for.

Surprise surprise, a couple weeks ago I'm checking my online banking service records as usual since I'm jobless at the moment and need to save all the money I've got, when I see a charge from SOE of 41.17, the amount they charge for a three month period of service. This, of course, pissed me off. I spent a great deal of time just getting my credit card information off of their records for that account, and have been interacting with them since then up until today trying to get a refund for my 41 dollars. I can't, however, since I don't have any e-mail from them about a cancelled account, because I never got anything of the sort from anyone there at all when I cancelled my account back in October OR when I got my information removed from this other account. So because they "require" such proof, I'm not going to get my refund, which pisses me the fuck off because I really needed to hold onto all the money I've got right now.

41 dollars? That's only like £20 or so. I'll wire it ya if ya want (TG me) :)

Indian callcenters are perhaps the only entity in existence that makes me feel a little racist when talking to them.

I work in a call center for a major U.S. telecom and just so you know it ain't all fun and games on our end.
For example I had a little old lady who called the other day demanding that I turn her Internet back on.
Seems that she did not pay the bill and was cut off.
By the time she had reached me the bill was paid and the order to restore service had been completed.
But when she first got the service her connection type was PPPoE.
Since then we have changed to DHCP.
No problem, I will just get her to log into her router and change connection type.
Sounds simple enough right?
45 minutes later I finally got her back online.
See she had no idea what a browser was.
Could not find the address field when we finally got the browser open.
Refused to try using the run command in Windows.
I finally had to have her boot up in Safe mode with networking (probably infected with spyware and viruses on top of everything else!)

But on the other hand I had a very sweet lady thanking me profusely for getting her connected in less than five minutes today by resetting her connection.

So it all balances out :)

This: http://www.somethingawful.com/index.php?a=3853 contains some hilarious stories about call centers, as well as other employees, who have had problem customers. The article itself isn't all that inappropriate, but the right sidebar is potentially NSFW.

This: http://www.somethingawful.com/index.php?a=3853 contains some hilarious stories about call centers, as well as other employees, who have had problem customers. The article itself isn't all that inappropriate, but the right sidebar is potentially NSFW.

http://www.callcentermovie.com/ :p

The last time I was trying to sort out my mobile with Orange, the woman was scottish and I had a real tough time trying to understand what she was saying so I asked to be put through to a call centre India. She said no because they only had call centres in the UK due to language difficulties.

Don't even get me started on AOL. My MIL used to have AOL, mainly for her husband, until she cancelled it - after he died. The account was in his name, but she paid for it and had it deducted automatically from her account. So she called to cancel.

They wanted to talk to the account holder. No matter how many times she explained it, they would not understand that the account holder was dead. She had to jump through hoops to get the dumb thing cancelled. It was absolutely ridiculous and I've vowed since never to use AOL again (though Time Warner, the other half of the company, has never given me any problems.)

AOL itself is a really shitty browser.

Anywho, I know of a few people that have been doublebilled by AOL for no reason. I feel sorry for people that don't check their Credit/Debit accounts...

I used to work in an IT supportcall center. Well, I still do, only I'm not on the phones any more.

The funniest call I ever got was from a guy who had uninstalled the TCP/IP protokoll cause a colleague had told him the would make his computer run faster... :D

But I have to say the most fun was training people and then giving them test calls to assess them. I simply unplugged my network cable and then had the following (short) conversation on the phone with an agent who had been working here for a few months already :

Me : "I've got no connectivity"
Agent : "None at all? Hmm... I need to take a look at that on your machine, let's open Netmeeting please. What's your IP?"

Here's more of the abovementioned company:

So they sent me this letter yesterday stating that I could get a free update of my internet connection speed. No strings, no extra costs attached.

Great!

All I'd need is my phone number and my customer number says the letter - just type it into the form provided on the mentioned webpage and it will be done.

Or so they think.

The webpage they gave me doesn't even have a place where to put my customer number, but when I enter my phone number (like I'm supposed to do), they check my connection speed and - surprise - they tell me I don't have DSL (while I'm connected with the internet! :confused: ).

Anyway, I called those dolts yesterday and today and will have a 33% increase in connection speed next week. :D (Again, I should mention "Or so they say".)

Heh!
Remember, way back when they first offered DSL to the German public and then had these endless delivery problems for the routers? I can tell you why that was!
We got 5!!!
One every other week....

There is the other side to this. I used to work on support for a telecoms company and spent hours giving advise to people who were too dumb or stupid to read the user guides (how to I put my sim card in etc).
These people shouldn't be allowed technology, and should only be able to call for support if they sign a sworn affadavit that they have actually tried to resolve the problem themselves.:p
We named those calls RTFM's - Read The F*****g Manuals

There is the other side to this. I used to work on support for a telecoms company and spent hours giving advise to people who were too dumb or stupid to read the user guides (how to I put my sim card in etc).
These people shouldn't be allowed technology, and should only be able to call for support if they sign a sworn affadavit that they have actually tried to resolve the problem themselves.:p
We named those calls RTFM's - Read The F*****g Manuals

Oh god no.... the worst cases I ever handled in tech support were people who had first tried to fix it themselves. They only called in when they were sure that they had messed things up so badly that the call would be hours of fun.

Oh god no.... the worst cases I ever handled in tech support were people who had first tried to fix it themselves. They only called in when they were sure that they had messed things up so badly that the call would be hours of fun.

I only use tech support as a last resort because it's so bad. If I can get it done in a short amount of time with minimum fuss I will.

I've been having a rather pleasant experience with people from call centres recently... specifically from one company. NTL Telewest (now Virgin Media Group). The staff seem knowledgable, friendly and well... just pleasant to talk to . *runs before the mob comes after him*

Heh!
Remember, way back when they first offered DSL to the German public and then had these endless delivery problems for the routers? I can tell you why that was!
We got 5!!!
One every other week....
It's probably the same with this thing now - they offer something "everybody" wants and can't cope with the response. Fucking idiots.

And don't remind me - I went and bought my own router after they failed to get things done for 6 weeks. Bastards. But they're still better than what I've heard from friends about other companies, so it's a choice of lesser evils only.

41 dollars? That's only like £20 or so. I'll wire it ya if ya want (TG me) :)

Telegram sent. My apologies for the late telegram as I did not see this post until now.

So: Who here likes talking to someone they've never met on the phone about a problem that no one else seems to understand?

Not me.

I spent four hours on the phone today alone trying to convince the people who I bought my laptop from that they sent me the wrong one. Which they did. I finally got through to them, but I don't even know if it was worth it.

Share your horror stories!

3...2...1...GO.

Well I work at a customer service call center, and almost everyone I talk to seems happier at the end of the call than they did at the begining. Even people being investigated for potential criminal activity have ended calls with "thanks, I feel better now."

I only use tech support as a last resort because it's so bad. If I can get it done in a short amount of time with minimum fuss I will.

That's exactly the philosophy that leads to problem calls for which the tech support people end up taking the heat. If you are genuinly tech savvy that's fine. But it's one of those situations where 80% of the American public thinks they are "above average" drivers.

Don't even get me started on AOL. My MIL used to have AOL, mainly for her husband, until she cancelled it - after he died. The account was in his name, but she paid for it and had it deducted automatically from her account. So she called to cancel.

They wanted to talk to the account holder. No matter how many times she explained it, they would not understand that the account holder was dead. She had to jump through hoops to get the dumb thing cancelled. It was absolutely ridiculous and I've vowed since never to use AOL again (though Time Warner, the other half of the company, has never given me any problems.)

Hells yeah, happened precisely the same way to me. Had AOL for two years when I was a little feller, and my Grandmother was paying for it. We tried to cancel it before she died, because I think AOL is ridiculous anyway, but no luck with getting them to stop taking money. That money was THEIRS, gosh darn it, and they weren't gonna stop taking it just because we'd switched to another ISP! Then she died, and the situation got 6 months of shouty phone calls worse...

Sky are also bastards, and I know this more from a friend who worked there than personal experience. He spends entire days at a time answering the phone with quotes from various Monty Python movies, or as the Moon from the Mighty Boosh. He still managed to retain employment for about 6 months, and was in fact fired for a completely different reason... I now have an interview for his job, so I promise I'll be nicer :)

This: http://www.somethingawful.com/index.php?a=3853 contains some hilarious stories about call centers, as well as other employees, who have had problem customers. The article itself isn't all that inappropriate, but the right sidebar is potentially NSFW.

Lots of sites have horror stories of people working in customer service...that's a pretty good roundup, though the sidebar is indeed just a bit insane...the first link makes me wonder just what people out there are really thinking...

Anyone seen the Foamy cartoon about this?

http://www.illwillpress.com/tech.html

Oh god no.... the worst cases I ever handled in tech support were people who had first tried to fix it themselves. They only called in when they were sure that they had messed things up so badly that the call would be hours of fun.

Well, if they read the manual before they start playing around... but I know that's too much to ask for.

My friend's dad was hopeless. His answer to everything [i literally mean everything] was to open the batch files and start tooling around in them. He fancied himself a "programmer" even though questions about what languages he uses were met with blank stares.

OOOO OOOO...ASK ME!!!! So the resolution to your problem would be to drive to their corporate office and tell them how it is...and tell the that they need to fix it NOW!!! No excuses!!! My friend did that with his electric bill and they turned his electric on right away (after 3 weeks of false promises)...are they finally sending you the right one?

If that doen't work...tell them that they need to send a shipping slip so you can return it (at their expense) and tell them that they WILL send you the one that you paid for in the first place...hee hee...what a bunch of morons...I work with a moron...he's my boss...and he is dumb as a rock!

Not to turn this into a computer idiot thread, but don't you love those special people that pick up a computer term and use it:

a. incorrectly

b. to diagnose everything wrong with their computer.
&
c. use it every three words.

ex. I got an email from someone who couldn't follow the instructions on my company's website to right click on the link and select "save target as." I had screen shots and everything. His diagnosis: the link was improperly formatted. I sent him back an email giving him the same instructions and telling him to refer to the screen shots on the site. He sends me another email back insisting he wouldn't have to do this if the link was formatted correctly. I sent him another email explaining it had to do with the size of the file, and people who don't have a high speed internet connection must follow the "save target as" instructions. I reiterated that it was not the formatting of the link, it was the size of the file. Back and forth we go for several days, him insisting his internet was very fast (it was dial-up), he didn't have time for this nonsense, formatting, formatting, formatting. Funny thing is he could have just clicked "save target as" after the first email (or read the directions) instead of emailing me for days on end, then getting angry because he "doesn't have time for this."