Thursday, July 31, 2008

Calling Dr Bombay

No, nothing to do with Bewitched but I wish I could zap someone with a twitch of my nose!

I have spent most of yesterday on the phone to British Telecom's 'customer service' department. Yes, you get thru to a person in Mumbai(Bombay) or somewhere in India. Very polite. They constantly thank you for calling BT and have no idea you are sitting at the other end considering suicide or committing mass murder or of various uses for the telephone in one's hand.

I got a bill. I noticed call charges. 361 phone calls to be exact for my second phone line. Not only have I not made those 361 calls, I do not have a second phone line.

Yes, you made these calls, Mr Andersson. You made them using your wireless hub and BT Talk.

No I didn't. I don't have a wireless hub. What is that?

It's the hub phone that you sed to make these calls through your broadband connection

No, I didn't use it. I don't have one.

yes, sir, you have a hub phone. It is plugged into your PC.

No I do not have one.

Yes you do. You have an account.

When was this account opened?

July 07.

How does one open this account?

Well, we send you a password and you call us and give us the password and we start your service.

Well, I didn't do that. I don't have a Talk account and nor do I have this Wireless Hub thing.

Yes, sir, you do. You have made 361 calls with it.

Then I remembered a box that BT sent me. I went and got it. It's a Wireless Hub thing. Unopened. I told them.

You have made these calls, Mr Andersson, using your Wireless Hub.

I am worried now about my blood pressure. Should I take my angina spray?

No I said, it's in it's box. I don't know what you are talking about. I have not made these calls. I don't have a Talk account and the Wireless Hub thing is not even plugged in.

I am so sorry sir, but you do have an account and you did make these calls. No sire no one has hacked into your account. No sire we do not make mistakes. I can assure you you have not been billed for someone else's line.

(I am now thinking of campaigning for a law change to sanction murder of BT Customer Service personnel on the grounds of extreme provocation and mental cruelty.)

Late last night after many hours on the phone to BT, I thought to call the second number that is supposedly mine. I hung up when a man answered! I didn't know what to say and was so shocked I would have sounded mad. So this morning I call again and leave a message on their Call Minder.

I also called OfCom and they were very helpful and I got thru to BT English As A First Language, No Heavy Accents complaints department. They must by law settle this within 48 working hours. (Read about 2 weeks I assume.)

They now accept that my bill is for someone else's phone. Or at least I think they do.

Whoever thought of outsourcing Customer services to India needs to be shot, after a lengthy amount of time talking with BT Customer Services.

They obviously never thought to wonder what these heavy accents would sound like on the telephone. Instead, we are driven to distraction by people who are not at fault. Of course they are not. They don't have an accent to themselves and also they are poorly trained and cannot answer anything much. They are clearly taught to deny everything. On top of this, we the customers, are made to feel guilty and racist because of the problems encountered. The people who dreamed this up have no respect for their customers nor for their staff. Those poor staff must be very stressed because whilst I did not at any time say what I really wanted to, I did raise my voice considerably and I enunciated loudly and clearly to no avail. Others though I am sure let rip on the poor Customer Service rep.

(Other companies also do this and they use French or Spanish people who are just as impossible to understand on a phoneline.)

Assuming I am not committed, had up on murder charges, taken to my bed, flipped my lid, or become otherwise indisposed, I ought to have an update to this saga by Tuesday.

If sometime on Monday or Tuesday there is a high magnitude earthquake centred on the east coast of Britain and causing a massive tidal surge heading in the general direction of BT Customer Services and all that lay in the way, you will know that it was not sorted out




13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, yes, I share your frustration. Mine was with our cable TV company. How, pray tell, can you troubleshoot with someone you can't understand and who doesn't understand YOU!

Congratulations on your control.

picperfic said...

EEK!! I felt myself holding my breath as I read these words! and relax and breath.....hope you get it sorted, how absolutely frustrating!

Anonymous said...

Oh Colin, I do sympathise! What is really annoying is the way they will insist they are right, they don't understand that you are not making these calls to be sociable, for the sake of your health, or because you have nothing better to do!! At least they did not end the call by trying to sell you another package!!
Alison

Anonymous said...

Your evil twin might blow up part of the English coast? Mwaaaahahahahah!
Now you've gone and done it: you've used your second line, proving that you do have it and you did set it up and.... You'll probably have to take this on up to the CEO of the company or the PM, or God, or someone God-like, somewhere, but they are probably all vacationing where there is no phone service...

Anonymous said...

Good Luck dearest Colin. Wanadoo drove me to tears a few years ago with their intransigent scripts, and the inability of the call centre staff to actually DO anything for customers. I do hope this matter reaches a swift and satisfactory conclusion - keep up your vitamins!!!!!!!!

Mokihana said...

Our stuff is outsourced to India too. Makes me crazy. I can mostly understand them, but trying to resolve anything is not easy.

Anonymous said...

Hi Colin-my blood pressure has just gone up 40 points reading your blog today!
What I find to be almost obscene is that companies that "outsource" their call centres to India put me in the humiliating and embarrassing position of having to tell another human being that I can't understand what they are saying.
I feel like that dreadful woman Pauline in the League of Gentleman, who pretends not to understand what the lovely Indian woman called Mary is saying.
Perhaps we all need to complain bitterly to customer services...but, of course, all the customer services departments are probably in India....aaaaaarrrrrhhhh!!

Judith said...

I recently went through this with Earthlink in the US, all their tech support is also in India. If I don't get a satisfactory answer pretty quickly, I ask to speak to their supervisor; and continue to move up the chain of supervisors until the problem is fixed. I do this with companies in the US too - works pretty well!

Yarnhog said...

I think we have all had this experience. It is so common, in fact, that I recently saw a television ad in the United States touting the fact that all their customer service is handled in the United States by native English speakers. Sign of the times, that. I blame the government (at least here), for allowing companies to outsource all of our jobs to low-paid, poorly-trained workers in other countries. That great sucking sound you hear is the U.S. economy going down the drain.

Anonymous said...

I go through the same thing when I call Dell for PC support. I finally have to say something to them when I get frustrated. Pretty much goes like this "Could you please stop reading from a script and give me someone who knows what they are talking about" or "I do this for a living, I've done all the troubleshooting that you are asking me to do and it didn't work, that's why I'm calling you" But the script comment usually gets them in the end.

Unknown said...

I'm so sorry you are having these problems but it is also funny to me that someone thousands of miles or kms away has the exact same problems I've had and has the exact same thoughts I've had.

Please relax until after you hear back from BT. Then, if you need to rant and rave, feel free to do so.

Anonymous said...

We left BT in the end as the calls to the call centre in India was driving us insane. That said we are still waiting for them to stop billing us for a service they are not providing!

Anonymous said...

We here in New Zealand also have a lot of companies using call centres in India, Phillipines, and other places. Very annoying to say the least!!