Late last year, a customer service rep for the Canada Revenue Agency launched a game titled “I Get This Call Every Day” that lets players experience the frustration of working in a call center. But now he no longer has to fret about this problem, as he’s without that day job. [More]
Call Service Employee Creates Game About Daily Frustrations Of His Job, No Longer Has That Job After Bosses Find Out
By January 30, 2013
AT&T Wireless Rep Refunds My Phone Upgrade Fees Because I Didn’t Whine About Them
By January 9, 2013
Natalie called up AT&T Wireless yesterday to ask about a few relatively small charges on her bill. The customer service representative offered her a refund of two $36 activation fees due to phone upgrades, explaining that it was because Natalie was quite possibly the only person who had called AT&T that day who hadn’t complained about activation fees. (We’re paraphrasing and exaggerating slightly.) Then the representative gave her another credit, ostensibly for being a loyal customer of twelve years. Natalie was stunned, and couldn’t think of a way to repay the CSR…until she found our site. [More]
Comcast Moves 1,000 Call Center Jobs Out Of California, Totally Doesn’t Blame State Government
By September 26, 2012
Comcast customers in northern California who call in for help won’t be talking to their neighbors anymore. Kabletown announced yesterday that they plan to shut down call centers in Livermore, Morgan Hill and Sacramento in November. The 1,000 employees affected will have the opportunity to receive severance packages, or to follow their jobs as they’re transferred to call centers in Oregon, Washington and Colorado. The interesting part, though, is what Comcast had to say about why they’re moving the jobs, then later retracted. [More]
iRobot's Outsourced Customer Service Tired Of Me, Dumps Me As A Customer
By August 21, 2012
“Outsourced” doesn’t always mean that work is shipped overseas. An outsourced call center can be anywhere. Well, anywhere with a low cost of living. What it always means is that the people doing outsourced customer-facing work are stuck reading from scripts and have limited information. That’s what Charles’ wife discovered this past weekend when dealing with an issue with her Scooba floor-cleaning robot. When she tried to order a replacement core for her broken Scooba, she received cryptic e-mails telling her that the company was “unable to complete [her] order” and that they would be “unable to assist [her] with this or future orders,” according to the corporate office. Wait, was iRobot breaking up with her? [More]
Don't Assume All Customer Service Reps With Accents Are Overseas
By August 16, 2012
Reader VermillionSparrow reads Consumerist comments and stories, and has a relatively minor beef with us. Yes, you readers, too. She has worked in call centers, and takes a little bit of offense when she reads references to “overseas” or “outsourced” call center representatives. Especially derogatory references. Some of those workers with accents were sitting just a few desks away from her at work: not on the other side of the planet. She warns us not to assume. [More]
Use The Clock And Google Voice To Actually Reach The IRS
By August 8, 2012
Sure, it’s not peak IRS season right now, but there is quite a variety of reasons that you might have to deal with the ever-present government agency anyway. Tax Cat is out of the office, vacationing at his offshore kitty condo in the Cayman Islands, so it’s up to reader Christopher, a tax preparer, to serve us up with handy tax advice. See, sometimes you have to call the IRS. You can’t avoid it. But so does everyone else in the country. What Christopher figured out is that the IRS call center doesn’t have fixed hours like most. Its open hours depend on what time zone you live in. His solution? Use a Google Voice number to fudge what time zone he’s in, and call late in the evening when the business day is done for most of the continental U.S. [More]
FCC Promises 100,000 New Jobs… At Call Centers
By August 4, 2011
Need a job? Come join the glamorous world of call centers! The FCC says that call centers are poised to add 100,000 new jobs to the economy. You’ll get your very own cubicle! Or, at least, your very own partitions! [More]
Delta To Bring Outsourced Calls Back To U.S. But Not Add Any New Jobs
By June 7, 2011
Delta Airlines recently announced that it had decided to move some of its outsourced call center operations out of South Africa and back to the U.S. But before anyone goes looking for a gig at Delta’s phone operations base in Dallas, the airline says it should be just fine with the staff it already has on hand. [More]
HP Call Center Supervisor Can't Help You, Answers To No One
By June 2, 2011
Consumer electronics have this terrible, terrible habit of breaking down shortly after the manufacturer’s warranty is up. In Eva’s case, the battery of her HP laptop self-destructed just two weeks after her original warranty ended. She thought that perhaps since her battery had started failing during the warranty period, they might give her a break. Nope. Thus began her battle of wills with R., the HP call center supervisor who can’t help you, but answers to no one. [More]
Dell Makes Good For Man Whose Life They Wasted 400 Minutes Of
By June 1, 2011
After Bill’s story of spending 400 minutes in Dell Hell to get his dead laptop replaced went up on Consumerist, Dell gave him a call [More]
Man's 400 Minutes In Dell Hell Could Cost Them Millions
By June 1, 2011
By pissing off this one customer, Dell may have lost millions of dollars. Bill is a corporate account holder and a consultant who makes recommendations to Fortune 500 companies on how to spend their IT money. Usually he recommends Dell, but after his trip to Dell Hell, that will no longer be the case. [More]
23 Things An Extended Warranty Call Center Rep Wished You Knew
By December 28, 2010
A shadowy figure steps out of the shadows, his fingers nicotine-stained and shaking. He glances around nervously before leaping forward and grabbing you by the lapels. “I’ve got 23 things to tell you about calling into an extended warranty call center,” he says, “and I don’t have much time.” [More]
CSR Reveals His Most-Hated Customer Cliches
By December 8, 2010
The other day we asked readers to vent about those cliched phrases they hate to hear from the mouths of customer service reps. And boy-howdy did you vent. Now it’s time to hear from someone who works in the trenches as a CSR about those tired tropes he’s sick of hearing customers utter over the phone. [More]
TWC: Saying "Upgrade" Connects You To Live Person. "Downgrade" Disconnects Call.
By November 18, 2010
A Raleigh, North Carolina woman is complaining that when you call Time Warner Cable the automated voice response tree is a little haywire. When you say “upgrade” it connects you to a live operator. But when you say “downgrade,” it disconnects your call. Funny how that works. [More]
Can I Make Companies Give Me A Copy Of My Customer Service Call?
By August 17, 2010
“This call may be recorded for quality assurance and training purposes.” Yes, but can I get a copy of it? Not unless you made one yourself. [More]
Acer And Gateway Have Crappiest Tech Support
By August 9, 2010
If you need to call tech support, you don’t want to be holding an Acer or a Gateway, a new Laptop Mag study finds. [More]
Get $20 Back From Comcast Just By Asking
By August 3, 2010
Without telling him there would be a fee, Comcast charged Tom $30 to fix the cable wiring going to his house. By simply questioning the charge and expressing his disappointment he wasn’t notified about it, Tom was able to get $20 back. Here is the chat transcript of his success, which is also enjoyable for the inane interjected advertisements that try to sound like human conversation. [More]
BP Customer Service Rep Says Disaster Call Center "A Diversion"
By June 14, 2010
“Janice” has been working in the BP Call Center in Houston, answering calls about the disaster from all over the world, and she says she and her coworkers don’t think the calls are being sent any higher up in the company. “We’re a diversion to stop them from really getting to the corporate office, to the big people. I don’t want to get emotional, but it’s so frustrating when these people live right there [in the Gulf Coast] and nothing is being done to help them.” [More]
