[BC] I Need to Vent!

[Sid Schweiger]

>>R&R was sold recently to a much bigger publisher. As is the case with
anything consolidated, they've combined their billing operations and
farmed it out to a third party which is not the same as the printing
operation.

I will never do business with MCI/Verizon for the same reason. Their call
center is in Indonesia and they simply read off the screen.  You CAN'T
talk to ANYONE here in the USA.<<

To be scrupulously fair, I will say that there are occasionally companies that outsource CS off-shore, but who take the time and effort to do it right, and in my experience one such company is HP.  I've had a few occasions to use their business-level CS to get some miscreant notebook computers repaired under warranty.  Their people do not have heavy accents, they do speak colloquial US English (and even understand most of the American clichés I sometimes toss into the conversation), they know the product lines well enough to not need scripts and they actually listen to what I say.  I've also never had an argument with them over warranty coverage because they apparently keep good records which are instantly available (and I usually purchase an extended warranty with our notebooks, which they always have on file).  They are also people who make an effort to be nice, and since I have called them more than once I usually get a "thank you for calling us again," something that goes a long way toward making the experience a pleasant one and ultimately keeping me as a customer.

If companies need to cut costs by outsourcing CS, there's nothing inherently wrong with that as long as they give as much attention to properly training their CS people overseas as they would over here.  Sadly, too few of them do.

Sid Schweiger
IT Manager, Entercom New England
20 Guest St / 3d Floor
Brighton MA  02135-2040