I am not a racist but....

[Galwaybhoy]

I hate dealing with Dell.  I had problems witrh my laptop and was put through to some Indian, I couldnt understand her and she couldnt understand me.  I wanted to be put through to the area to sort out a problem with my laptop and she put me through to the sales department.  Luckily in the end I ended up talking to some lad with an Ulster accent, and while he couldnt sort out the problem he was a great help.  I had another problem with Dell soon after that though when once again I was put through to some Indian lad.

To be honest I hate having to deal with foreigners that dont understand the language.  If they can speak proper English then no problem, I dont mind.  But when they dont know what your looking for and get confused when you try to explain it really annoys me.  Or when they mix orders up...The sad thing is anytime these facts are pointed out you always get some PC idiot who disagrees with you because your "racist" even if your right.

[the colonel]

Correction - you ususally get an Indian with a semi Scottish accent

should try living in dundee with an irish accent, thick fcukers dont understand what your saying, right enough i cant understand alot of them, and glaswegians are desperate altogether

[rosnarun]

Leave the indians alone . I have 3 of them paying my Mortgage Lovely people. always pay on time never quibble overbills could not parise them enough. AS for those PAK...........
BTW when i ring Sky i always get a scot with the most wonderful clear accent you can imagine.
on the other habd Spring soft water company ring me about once a week fron a call center in india and just wont take no for an answer so i just stay silent untill they hang up .
My own private war

[ziggysego]

The India Call Centre for BT Yahoo was driving me at the beginning of the week, so I share your pain.

I'm not a racist.

[magpie seanie]

BTW when i ring Sky i always get a scot with the most wonderful clear accent you can imagine

Count your blessings.

[thebandit]

The Indians could't be any worse than the ones who work in the Vodaphone call centre in Dundalk

Imaaaaaagine wha' dey soun' like heeeeey

[The Real Laoislad]

To be fair to the Indian though, the Laois accent is a bastard to decipher.

Funny coz it's true

[Square Ball]

could be worse, they could be staffef by Belfast millies. Imagine it, sitting at their desks in the jammies, hooped earrings that you put round your waist, chewing chewing gum loudly down the phone, intermittently blowing bubbles and banging them, then twirling it round their finger, blond hair, fake tan making them look like ompa lumpas. "Wat did ya say misser"

[Armagh Cúchulainns]

im not racist either but i just cant understand them indians, pakistanis etc at all so rather than try and talk to them and understand what they want i just hang up.

I was contacted the other day via a scottish call centre and while the call was to do with banking standards and services offered etc. the operator managed, with my help, to talk his way round from banking to cars, and how diesel is better over petrol and some potential premiership transfers.

All in all not a bad phone call.

[Fionntamhnach]

Just happens that some accents happen to be more difficult to decipher than others. One of the main problems here in Ireland, north & south, is that most of us would not talk to people very often who are either from or are second generation Indian sub-continent. Therefore the strong accent that most of them would have when speaking in English can be hard to understand when you're not used to it.

I was calling Orange last week about a tarrif change on a mobile phone of mine & I remember the last time I called them I had an operator who was near unintelligible, so was a bit apprehensive this time but thankfully this guy I talked to was a lot clearer to hear and speak to. Also some UK operators have similar accents - one time I was on the phone to a Birmingham office whereby a woman was on the phone whose accent was hard to make sense of for me.

Some "native" accents can be difficult for others to make sense of. Very often foreign visitors & workers often mention that most Irish people speak much quicker than over in Britain, and in places like Ballymena and Strabane you crank it up even further. The BBC at one time in the 90's was going to relocate their central complaints office from London to Belfast. Could you imagine some lad from the Home Counties of England ringing up, gets speaking to a man from West Belfast & gets an earful of "Whata 'ye whingin aboot now?"!

[Gaoth Dobhair Abu]

I hate the fact that these call centres (where ever there are abroad) are taking jobs away from Irish people and English, Scottish and Welsh. Also they are seriously hard to understand, theres something comforting about speaking to someone with an understandable accent, especially when you consider that most of the time you are calling one of these places its because of a problem!

But jezuz lads this thread is starting to sound seriously racist! 

[Bord na Mona man]

The race issue is a red herring here. If I worked in a call centre for French callers, using my Leaving Cert level of the language, it certainly wouldn't be a good level of service. The customers would be entitled to expect better. I wouldn't label anyone who expressed dissatisfaction with this a racist.

Outsourcing to places like India, while cheap has plenty of drawbacks. I know of a couple of IT related companies who tried it and it backfired on them. The poorer quality of work more than undid any cost savings made. If you let your bank or service provider know that you aren't happy with the standard of service, then they might rectify it. By looking for better language skills when hiring or else locating in countries where English is the primary language.

Obviously it's probably taboo to complain about such things. I'm guessing the only people who do so probably do it for racially motivated reasons. So the companies assume that apart from a few crackpots, people are happy enough with the cheap level of service.

[GalwayBayBoy]

But jezuz lads this thread is starting to sound seriously racist!

To be fair this is a thread about pathetic customer service.

But as it concerns Indian call centres people feel they have to tippy toe around the situation. Something they wouldn't do if they got crap service from someone with an Irish accent.

Something I'm sure multinational companies love as it glosses over their absymal service.

[Gnevin]

The India Call Centre for BT Yahoo was driving me at the beginning of the week, so I share your pain.

I'm not a racist.

BT have a call center in Dublin , just ring the chairmans office and say your no speaking with "off shore" anymore . Most company's do have call centers here or in the UK as 2nd line when people get pissed off. Just make your feelings known, call the complaints line and demand to speak to a Irish/UK tech/sales  agent

[Fluffy Che]

A lot of Indians have recently moved into my building and l have found them to be generally an unfriendly bunch, they rarely if ever respond to my greetings, they dont integrate and the smell of onions cooking at 8 in the morning is not too nice.
ls this racist? A matter of opinion l suppose..
But what if they were say, Welsh! And l was to call them a shower of smelly Taffys..is that racist? Whats the difference?