Crazy call centre's located anywhere but in your country.

[David Morton]

Crazy call centre\'s located anywhere but in your country.

I have just finished a previously ongoing saga re M&S Mastercard by cutting up the card and closing the account. The reason: Every time I have tried to ring them I have been routed to a call centre in Bangalore. When I first took out this account I was treated very well and the level of service was excellent though I was talking to a service agent here in the UK at the HSBC centre (which handles M&S). Since then the service has declined so much to the extent that I no longer accept anything they say and this recent episode was no exception. These people in these call centres in Bangalore are the most beaurocratic intransigent lying bastard plebs I have ever come across. Outsourcing for the sake of cheap labour has to end sooner or later.
Two other companies that use them: AOL, HSBC.
I'm sure you all can add a few more.
If you feel the same as I do, please write a letter to the company concerned and threaten them you will withdraw your patronage. If you dont feel the same as I do, slide into oblivion because thats what will happen to you. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/bash.gif

 

[TimB]

Re: Crazy call centre\'s located anywhere but in your country.

David,

I manage a tech support call center here in the states and I can tell you from industry conferences I have been to the trend is away from outsourcing due to the customer satisfaction issues. We do still have other centers overseas to handle calls depending on time of day you call (follow the sun) but those centers are still owned and staffed by our own employees who have a greater interest in seeing our company succeed than an outsource company ever would. By the way if any of you happened to read the Wall Street Journal yesterday they referenced a website http://www.paulenglish.com/ivr/ that gives you numeric codes to get you directly to a live person when calling most major corporations

Tim

 

[David Morton]

Re: Crazy call centre\'s located anywhere but in your country.

Tim,
I appreciate your response and I am heartened by your comment that the trend is away from outsourcing vis-a-vis customer satisfaction issues. I now have in place a screen note that I will not discuss anything unless I am talking direct to HSBC in the UK and AOL in Eire and they will then put me through directly, but M&S will not accept that, hence they lost the business. Again thanks for the web site which does have a few UK companies.
Dave M

 

[Ian Anderson]

Re: Crazy call centre\'s located anywhere but in your country

David

I got the hell in with Company Barclaycard (Barclays is my pet hate)

I got the recording and then dialled 999 (Emergency number in UK) and got straight through to a manager!

I tried it on Amex UK and it also worked!

Perhaps I was lucky but it's worth a try - I too will not speak to India, Thailand or elsewhere.

Ian

 

[JimmyMac]

Re: Crazy call centre\'s located anywhere but in your country

I got a cold call on Boxing Day from a company enquiring if I have double glazing.
When I asked the gentleman where he was calling from, he replied "Mumbai"

Can someone please tell me if a citizen of Mumbai would know anything about thermal insulation or snow far that matter ?

 

[ChrisL]

Re: Crazy call centre\'s located anywhere but in your country

Direct telemarketing is one of my pet hates, and they always seem to call while I'm in the middle of something important. But since the calls have begun arriving from overseas locations I have devised a strategy that hits them back harder. Whenever they call, I will interrupt their spiel and politely ask them to hang on a minute which they will happily do. I then place the phone in a drawer where they sit wasting THEIR time (instead of mine) and clock up time on international phone costs. If they get me on a bad day, I will even go back every minute or so and ask them to wait a little longer. The telemarketing calls have now stopped.

 

[Chris Kouba]

Re: Crazy call centre\'s located anywhere but in your country

I used to do this all the time as well, and LOVED it. It used to drive my (ex-)girlfriend nuts though. Apparently she thought it was being mean to them as opposed to them uninvitedly calling my private residence. I'd get the call and they'd ask for me, I'd ask who's calling and just say, hold on a minute... and on and on.

My problem has been eliminated with the switch to mobile only and being very cautious when I give my number (normally end up using my work # if one is required).

Good fun times though seeing just how long you can get them to stay on the line!

Chris

 

[40 Bud]

Re: Crazy call centre\'s located anywhere but in your country

Kind of like a cat playing with a live mouse!

 

[Howard Jones]

Re: Crazy call centre\'s located anywhere but in your country

Hello, Can I speak with Howard Jones please?

Who is calling please?

ABC bank card. May I speak with Howard Jones please?

I'm sorry, he died just last week.

Oh aahh Oh....ahh.... thank you............sorry to aahhhh.... good by.


Works every time.

 

[David Morton]

Re: Crazy call centre\'s located anywhere but in your country

Just in:

Mujibar was trying to get a job in India.

The Personnel Manager said, "Mujibar, you have passed all the tests, except one. Unless you pass it you cannot qualify for this job."

Mujibar said, "I am ready."

The manager said, "Make a sentence using the words Yellow, Pink and Green."

Mujibar thought for a few minutes and said, "Mister manager, I am ready."

The manager said, "Go ahead."

Mujibar said, "The telephone goes green, green, green, and I pink it up, and say, 'Yellow, this is Mujibar.'"

Mujibar now works as a technician at a call center for computer problems.

No doubt you have spoken to him.

 

[Mitch D]

Re: Crazy call centre\'s located anywhere but in your country

David - baa haaaaaaaa haaaaaaaaaaaaaaa haaaaaaaaaaaaaa

I can't stop laughing over that one!!!


Slightly off topic, with regards to Howard's post for annoying telemarketer calls. If you too are annoyed with those annoying telemarketer calls, I cannot recommend enough the "Phone Zapper". At least in the US, this works extremely well. In the US there are two main auto-dialing systems used by telemarketers, and these are used 98% or more of the time to phone us at home. The phone zapper is a simple device that you plug into your phone line (it looks like a line filter) and whenever the phone is picked up (by you or your answering machine) it sounds a small "beep". You have heard this before yourself if you dialed a number and heard "beep-Beep-BEEP, the number you have dialed is no longer in service, if you think that you dialed incorrectly hang up and try again" The single beep from the zapper is recognized as a kill tone by the auto-dialers and it thinks the number is no longer in service so it hangs up on you and updates the internal database to flag the number as no longer active. I used to get 10 calls/messages a week from telemarketers, now I get virtually NONE. The person who invented this device should get a Nobel prize!

David - keep the good ones coming!!

Mitch D