nothing worse than than having to phone tech support or customer service and be talking to someone who has an accent that you can't understand at all. happened again yesterday and i had to ask what? i can't understand you about 15 TIMES! i know that the co.'s source this out to countries like india, but wtf? grump, grump....

I went through the same thing with Compaq for close to a year trying to get the proper warranty repairs done.

Went through the same thing trying to setup an auto deduction for my truck payment. I just walk my payments into the bank now, kills some of my lunch hour but... I felt really bad when I was trying to set it up though.. I kinda got a lil frustrated towards the end of the call and I thought the rep was off the line and I was like mfgd! You'd figure they'd have ppl answering the phone who spoke some f'm English!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Then I heard will that be all today sir... I felt this big......

I scream
I yell
I dictate to them the meaninglessness of their job.

and I usually get what I want.

I think the Indians take customer service to a new level and cannot hang up etc where if I did what I did to an american I would get a world of cussing and hung up on.

As long as you can dictate exactly what you want and dont budge or waiver for a second, then you can usually get what you want. (this works for Dell ALOT)

On the other hand, as bad as foreign support is, there is alot worse.. Without being offensive, there is a certain demographic/sex combination in this country that i shudder if I get on the phone for support. Give me the foreigner any day over that.

Alot of the big companies are outsourcing all thier tech support and customer service to countries like India now. It's a very bad business move.

These people take a course on how to 'sound American' and try to feign and American accent. They even say their names are things like Steve, Buddy, Sheila, Betty, etc to try to pull it off.

It ridiculous, because they all work from a script, and if you knock them off that script with questions, they sit there like deer in the headlights. And then go right back to the script, where they left off, even when it isn't pertinent. But then off course, if you take the script away and they have to think a little, the answer is always 'sorry sir, I can't help you, the problem is yadda yadda, and there will be a incident report filed, here is the reference #, please call back and talk to someone else.'

Dell Computers comes to mind with this, because I've been hearing alot of people say they won't buy from them anymore just for this reason. It sucks, because Dell used to have great customer service, and now it's in the cespool.

It ridiculous, because they all work from a script, and if you knock them off that script with questions, they sit there like deer in the headlights. And then go right back to the script, where they left off, even when it isn't pertinent. But then off course, if you take the script away and they have to think a little, the answer is always 'sorry sir, I can't help you, the problem is yadda yadda, and there will be a incident report filed, here is the reference #, please call back and talk to someone else.'

I've been in IT for almost 20 years now and that is how its ALWAYS been done. Way before they outsourced over seas, level one tech support always read from a script and got just as confused when they had to deviate in any way from the script.

Honestly, other than the language barrier, I don't see much difference in the way Tech Support is working. Its always worked like that

hello....? aw crap !, i can't hear a damn thing now... hello?

hello? can ya hear me now? and then i call back to get a different person

until i can understand the person that answers... it is after all...my dime.

It seems like nowadays there are more local, independent tech support people who have a very broad knowledge of most computer systems and can troubleshoot much better than some person reading from a sheet. They're especially prevalent in college towns where they can score $50 a pop or more for setting up a freshman's computer in their room (they color code the plugs now, even! come ooon!) Some of them are real nice, will come to your house, and will charge you a fair price. I'd go with them over an 800# any day.

I have to live this eveyday. If the beancounters only listened to their customers