Colt Brennan Nation? What happened to Timmy Chang? I thought you were Pres of his fan club.

Fan club? I have no idea what you're talking out. His eligibility ended a few years ago and Colt was next in line. Hence the 'Colt Brennan Nation' in my profile.

Tim's fine and we're still friends. :)

From everything I know, you're neither a douche nor instructing your hires and/or those in 'seminar' to take the latest social psych fad and do the superficial least you can 500% more than is reasonable . . . <3<3<3<3<3

Other people give you a bad name, I swear it! Or, like, should I phrase this as an "I-statement" and take this to conflict resolution through an appropriately-trained HR representative?

Update: I just got another call from an Indian who informed me,"we going to sprinkle pixie dust on you order and make it get there for Christmas". I hope so.

Please refer to the conflict resolution policy in your GC handbook.

I never really paid attention to names of the customer service reps until recently. Then I had a dispute on my credit cardthat was supposed to be resolved (as told to me by "Jennifer"), but then the charge was back on the bill the next month plus a service fee. Well, when I called back I could tell them who I spoke to (I had doodled the name on the bill while I was on the phone) and it was taken care of very quickly. Now I always write the name down as well as the time and date.

I think most credit card companies and such have the same type of system as I did when I temped at a Credit Card Counseling Service. When they type your account number and bring up your account, it shows all of the credit activities and payments, as well as a log of your phone calls. When "Jennifer" talks to you, she will Timestamp your account and type in the highlights of your conversation. So, when you call the next time, the rep can see all of your activity and all of the phone calls you've ever made. Normally, when they say "Give me just a minute to bring up your account", they are actually taking that "minute" to quickly review the information from your last few calls, especially if the calls were recent.

^^^
I know they probably have a log of my calls, but I want them to know that I also know when I called and who I talked to. That way they can't lie and say they don't know what I am talking about! I've developed trust issues with call centers!

Which reminds me-- my sister sent me a Christmas gift from Amazon.com. When I opened the box the gift was there, plus another toy that was not on the packing slip and wasn't ordered by my sister. I assume the order filler messed up and gave me an item from someone else's order. I reallly don't feel like messing around with a call center to explain what happened-- or trudging to UPS to send it back!

I called tech support a couple of days ago for something to do with my xbox360. I hadn't registered the system yet, so I did that. I gave my street info, city, then she asked me what "region" I lived in.

Region questions are very confusing to Oklahomans. We're not exactly a part of any particular region, so I asked her what she meant by "region."

The poor girl hazarded a guess -- that Oklahoma is in California.

I had to explain to her that no... Oklahoma is a state. In the United States, there are 50 separate states. That Oklahoma is just like Texas and California -- a state. I explained that if she click on the drop down menu by city, there would be a list of two-letter codes and that she should choose the letters "OK."

It got really interesting when I had to explain to her that I lived in a city called "Oklahoma City" in the state of Oklahoma. That was apparently very confusing.

If she gets a call from someone in Indiana, PA she'll probably stab herself in the eye.

Accents
 

As so many have said, I, too have had the unfortunate experience of speaking to a (hah!) Customer Service Representative in India. It's bad enough when you are asking to have an order corrected or for a refund, but my most recent experience was the worst. This one was in person. I just spent 8 days in the hospital in Houston, in one of America's leading cancer centers. Billion dollar budget; you'd think they could and would hire the very best health care specialists.

One of my RN's was from India. When I tell you I could not understand one word that she uttered, nor could she understand anything I asked her, I am not kidding. She tried to force me to take my medication before surgery. One does not take meds before anesthesia except for heart meds if absolutely necessary. I am not a medical professional but have had enough experience being hospitalized to know that.

I called my son as soon as she left and told him how unprofessional she was. He came to the hospital and spoke with the charge nurse. As soon as he left, the RN came crashing into my room, grabbed my sore leg and demanded to know why I complained about her. At least I think that is what she said. I didn't complain to the charge nurse, my son did, so I had no idea what had been said. I begged her to let go and to stop screaming at me. She scared me so badly. I am a very strong person mentally and physically but at that moment, I was very vulnerable...alone and in pain and I was really frightened. I kept pressing the call button to no avail because the nurse was already in my room cursing me in her native language. I finally reached for the phone and called for security. My son went ballistic when he heard what happened. I will still receive a bill for close to 6 figures regardless of my experience with the Indian princess! She, like so many of the CSR's in India, needs to choose a profession in which she has no public contact.

Paula M.
Sigma Delta Tau
ΣΔTPatriae Multi Spes Una One Hope of Many People

I remember seeing a report on 60 Minutes about this.....here is the written portion

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/...in590004.shtml

Paula - you really should take your story to one of the local newspapers or television stations. I don't even have the words for how wrong your experience was.

I honestly think companies are going to start suffering a backlash from this.

and let's try Madrid, IA, or Nevada, IA or London, OH or how about Versailles, OH.

Not even going into the multiples of Springfields, Bloomingtons, heck my little town of Indianola, IA has sister cities in at least Washington State, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, and Texas.

Our country boggles the unknowing mind...

*hugs you tight* Please please please make sure to speak to a higher up in the hospital about this...I hope you remember her name. She needs to be disciplined for that, I'm so sorry this happened to you. Plus if you didn't know better and took the meds, something could have happened to you that had the potential to be life threatening...which would have been very bad.

I can't understand why people who can't speak English work in the medical profession. I went in for pre-testing for my surgery and I could barely understand a work that the doctor who saw me said, his accent was that thick. And he didn't know what JRA was. A doctor should know that, I shouldn't have to explain.

Then, I get a call Wen night from the hospital from a very nice Russian lady who was trying to tell me that my insurance wouldn't cover my surgery and she said something along the lines of she doesn't know how to explain why not. She couldn't explain it because she could hardly understand English. :mad: That was not fun. At all.

I hope you were able to get your problem resolved after all of that!

OMFG. She had no right to do that. You could charge her with assault for that. She should be fired and not allowed to nurse anywhere, ever again.

Indian Princess
 

Thank you all for your support. The hospital administrator was informed of the situation and last I heard, the nurse was being disciplined. I do not understand why she was hired in the first place. Communication in a medical situation is crucial...surely the Human Resources person interviewed her before offering her the position...what was she thinking? I left the hospital the following day so I did not have to deal with the situation any further but I hope no one else has to deal with this nurse.
I cannot wait to receive the follow-up survey!

Paula M.
Sigma Delta Tau
ΣΔTPatriae Multi Spes Una One Hope of Many People

Ok, if that nurse hollered at me and physically grabbed my sore leg while I was in a hospital bed, I wouldn't have "informed the hospital administrator", I would have called the police.

You said you called hospital security, right? Did they actually come up? Did any of the other hospital staff come running in when they heard her yelling? I guess I just don't understand how this whole thing seems to be getting the brush off. I sure hope the hospital follows up with you and lets you know precisely what disciplinary action was taken against her.

.....Kelly :)

These were my thoughts too. Also, Human Resources cannot discriminate against things like accents. Unfortunately bad apples slip through the cracks but they can't just say "Hey yeah sorry we can't understand you even though you know what you're doing".

An accent is one thing. Inability to do your job and communicate with patients/customers is quite another. If a person is deaf you wouldn't hire them to be a bus driver...that's not discrimination, that's common sense.

Exactly. I've always been able to understand dialects, as long as I can remember. If I can't understand someone, there's really something wrong, and it's not my ear. It IS common sense to make sure that "John" can be understood by his customers.

As to the hospital scenario, a client of mine was being ignored by her nurses while in the hospital. After an hour of odd treatment, she made a call, and a nurse came in, laughing. "You called the police on us, did you?" I really admired her ingenuity!

I totally agree with you here.

seriously! it was such a crapshoot with the science and math classes! i registered for calculus 2 (which is hard enough as it is, never mind with an accent) for a professor with a seemingly American name... what i got was a Russian accent with a lisp.

how i managed to get a B in that class...sheesh.

Or how about New York, NY? :D

The "pixie dust" sent us a polo with neither name nor pirate insignia. Disney realized it right before the shirt arrived and warned us to expect it and said, "Just give it to charity!" They still claim that the correct shirt will arrive today.