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]
call centers
FCC Promises 100,000 New Jobs… At Call Centers
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
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
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
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 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
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
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.
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?
“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
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
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"
“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]
Get Off Junk Mail Lists With Blitz Calling
This is an awesome new tactic for getting off junk mail lists. I just learned it from Phillip, a Consumerist reader I met at the Consumers Union Activist Summit, who is eating a sandwich next to me. He calls it “Blitz Calling” and he’s used it to successfully get off seven different junk mail lists that initially tried to ignore him. [More]
LucyPhone Stands In "Please Hold" Lines For You
Now you can get on with the rest of your life while a friendly robot named LucyPhone stands holding your place in the customer service wait line. [More]
5 Secrets To Get Better Verizon Wireless Customer Service
Here’s 5 things you might not know about Verizon Wireless that could also help you be more successful when dealing with customer service and customer service issues: [More]
Use Spanish To Slice Through CSR Phone Hell
Christopher says there are advantages to pressing “2.” According to him, United States-based call centers give Spanish speakers fewer hoops to jump through before they get answers. He writes: [More]
HP Needs You To Fax Broken Printer's Receipt In The Next 30 Minutes
Ron in Utah tells Consumerist that he purchased what he thought was a brand-new HP printer, but ended up being more of a Box of Crap. The printer inside wasn’t just non-functional, it was so old that the warranty had expired. HP Customer service’s answer? Before they could help him, he had to fax his original receipt within thirty minutes GO NOW NOW NOW TO THE FAX MACHINE NOW! [More]
