Brits hate call centres - official

Pressing "*0" seems to work quite often for getting you an operator, like, now.

Otherwise I find repeatedly and deliberately keying invalid menu choices can be another effective way of circumventing the menu system. All though sometimes you get a "you seem to be having trouble, so I'm going to hang up now" message. Which is nice and friendly.

Actually Yesterday I had to call our 'service desk' to sort out some issues with my system at a major company. And the man sitting in bangalore tried to help me but I could not understand what he was saying.

He got irritated that I did not understand his dinga-ding-ding and I was sad and frustrated since I really needed his help.

I blame the local management in india for not hiring better qualified staff, than rather grabbing people off the streets and offering them a rupee or two a month.

The best way to come around this is to escalate it internally within your organization or send emails to the company you require service from.

Otherwise the next set of call centres will be located in Botswana and you will need a swahili dictonary to be able to get passed the menu.

You think I am joking? What is cheaper for the incompetent boss? two or three rupees a month, or UN paid food packages?

Think about it, and complain before it is too late!

Why do these companies give their support call centres to an oversea agent and then reduce the VOIP to an impossibly low data rate?

It's as if they want to piss off their customers in going somewhere else?

I often hear the musik on the phone at a loud enough level and then when I'm connected I have to ask the operator to speak up as they're so damn quiet.

I ask them to speak up and this improves things until their microphone slips away again and I have to ask them to repeat themselves again.

Amazing the fun you can have with this game.

Someone would find a back door for Tiscali's technical support line.

I wouldn't mind what I spoke to, just as long as I could
1) Understand them
2) They knew which way up to hold a mouse

Unfortunately their level 1 support (the only one that seems to exist), fails on both counts.

They also don't grasp basic sarcasm in support request emails.

If you spend enough money per month with Orange you get UK based call center staff as soon as you press 3. It's the option for "Speak to a person".

I find Orange Premium to be so good that even if I can save £5-£10 a month I will stick with Orange rather than switch to O2/Vodafone/3 etc.

However all is not rosy. The only reason I would switch is if Orange don't increase their range of mobile phones to include more of HTC's new amazing phones. In fact it's likely I will switch since Orange don't seem to be launching the Touch Pro, only the excellent Touch HD. But I want a keyboard.

Which is a shame. Maybe if I speak to someone at Premium, threaten to leave, they can magic me a Touch Pro!

HTC Touch Pro - Vodafone will only sell you one as a business contract, ffs. You'd think there wasn't a recession the way some of these large companies not providing choice and making it easy for us! ;-)

This article sort of reminds me of when I had to deal with BT's option system when trying to pay my parents phone bill while they were on a round-the-world trip.
I tried it three times and signed up to pay online (bad mistake), both will no joy. BT just did not want me to pay the bill.
In the end, I took the bill to the HSBC down the road and within a minute, the bill was paid.
Moral of the story: KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid!).

UK call centres are equally bad. I have to call Verigin media support and most of the times they are very rude. They will commit something but never shows on the record and I have to call again next month and hold the phone for 30-45 minutes.

Last week I called Natwest for a charge appearing on my statement. Instead of explaining the reason, I was transferred to (yes UK) call centre. The UK call centre guy wanted to ask me all my history instead of explaining the reason for the charge. It was 20 minutes before I was given reason for the charge on my statement.

Overseas call centres at least you do not have to wait for 30 minutes to talk to someone.

Well if you are hoping for complete system training over the phone, then any call centre in the world cannot help you, be it dinga-ding-ding or swahili or UK call centre. One of the reasons for these call centres is the ignorance of the customers and expectation of the customers.


Remember call centers do not get setup automatically, companies do go theough case studies and spend lots of time and effort to setup them up. 

There must be some problems with UK call centres, otherwise why are they being setup abroad. And sooo many of them .....

I have also suffered from the call centres, but cannot blame the agent, as he was following the instructions and their company policies.