I am not a racist but....

[Bud Wiser]

When you here the words, I'm not racist but.... often it means the opposite, but no, I am definitely not a racist.

Last week I nearly became one.  I see in this mornings business news that Dell are to lay off 450 workers here in Ireland.  Well last week if I had to get my hands on the asshole I was dealing with they would have only have to lay off 449.  I stood on the screen of my laptop and rang them to buy a new one.  I could not understand one single word the Indian I was talking to was saying.  The only thing I could understand was that he had a sales drive like a Morrocan manning a leather stall at a Spanish market.

First thing he demanded my phone number which I gave him. Then he demanded my mobile and I gave him that. How am I going to pay?  When I said credit card he went into overdrive.  I told him to slow down, I wanted to ask him the build of a specific model and we established that the price included a battery that would last about twenty minutes after six months use.  This annoyed him and he told me that he would give me the exact same computer with the highest amphere rated battery (one and a half hours - two hours) and I asked him what about the battery with the spec they are advertising that lasts up to six hours?

In the end I said I would look at all the specs again and come back to him or ring back sales later.  He went balistic and kept on and on about what else he could do and I kept saying I would call back.  That's when it started.  My mobile phone rang.  It's the Indian.  I tell him I will ring him back and not to ring me again.  For twenty five minutes he alternated calls between my mobile and landline, at one stage I answered the mobile and left it beside the speaker of the radio that was turned up but he just kept ending and redialling the call.  In the end I told him I had logged a complaint with Rathfarnham Garda.  I could go on about this but the next time you get a colour brochure that is always in your face, either through direct mailshots or in every paper you buy, think about the hassle you are going to get from a company who have been parading as an Irish one, with 450 Irish people that are not cheap enough for them to employ and a crowd of henchmen who have three different specs of battery for a simple laptop and who are in a majority of people that I can not understand speaking. 

I am not a racist but....

[Declan]

Share your pain Bud - Had a similar experience earlier this year. The benefits of globalization

[Bud Wiser]

The cheap battery thing is a scam!

[Long time dead]

Bud in all fairness, if you hadn't made a transaction why on God's green earth would you simply give out both your mobile number and landline at the start of the conversation, that just seems crazy!!!!

[Blacksheep]

I'm just off the phone to my credit card company - Marbles. The call was routed to India - i think. I couldn't understand a word the fella was saying. In the end we ended up conversing using the phonetic alphabet. Rediculous. A 2 minute call took 10 at least! That's L for Lima, E for Echo, A for Alpha, S for Seira, and T for Tango.

[Orior]

Sent you a PM there bud.

Offshoring contact centres is the pits.

By the way, I have a hilarious mp3 about a guy who phones up DELL support because he cant switch his mums laptop off. If you want a copy then pm me your email address. Alternatively, if you can host it then pm me too.

Cheers.
O

[magpie seanie]

Ringing SKY I've had to resort to the phonetic alphabet several times and they still have my name spelt wrong. It is pretty frustrating. A few times I actually thought it was a wind up and a television crew would come round the corner.

[ONeill]

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

[mannix]

I understand your grief,however.
1. Indian food is unreal, i love it.
2. Flew with air india once, the indian air hostesses are drop dead beautiful.
3. You can call an indian man a gombeen or a buggawn and he will smile back and say something like "one millions thank you"
4. Had a pakistani lad in my secondary school class, awful crack altogether in the science lab, he would go into the long box thing we called a workbench and we would hold him in there for double science, then he would be exempt for irish and sit at the back of the class snoring with the teacher going nuts.He was a genuine gas dude and was always up for a laugh.
5.You should should ask the telephone sales guy if he has any sisters, that soon stop the conversation and phone calls.

[Long time dead]

I understand your grief,however.
1. Indian food is unreal, i love it.
2. Flew with air india once, the indian air hostesses are drop dead beautiful.
3. You can call an indian man a gombeen or a buggawn and he will smile back and say something like "one millions thank you"
4. Had a pakistani lad in my secondary school class, awful crack altogether in the science lab, he would go into the long box thing we called a workbench and we would hold him in there for double science, then he would be exempt for irish and sit at the back of the class snoring with the teacher going nuts.He was a genuine gas dude and was always up for a laugh.
5.You should should ask the telephone sales guy if he has any sisters, that soon stop the conversation and phone calls.

[Main Street]

By the way, I have a hilarious mp3 about a guy who phones up DELL support because he cant switch his mums laptop off. If you want a copy then pm me your email address. Alternatively, if you can host it then pm me too.

This is it I think.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSaDXVRSIbo

I wonder who put it up on You Tube? I doubt that it was the inbred with sh#t for brains calling support.

[Hardy]

I'm with the caller. Everyone knows what it's like to sit on hold for an hour and then get some couldn't-care-less, bored-sounding so-and-so interrogating you for all your phone numbers and your email address and where you buy your socks, when all you have is a simple question that doesn't depend on who or where you are. And it's not intuitive that you hold the power button down for ten seconds.

Of course, he should have read the manual. Or had someone read it to him.

[Main Street]

Do you think he would have enough cop to record his marathon session with Dell support and then upload it to You Tube?

[Kerry Mike]

With Sky you usually get someone from Scotland, really hard to understand and shake off. I've moved to Chorus recently, customer service is still crap but at least when you do get through to someone its ususlly an Irish wan.

I'm not racist either but I'd still rather be a Pakistani than a Jackeen or a Langer.

[magpie seanie]

With Sky you usually get someone from Scotland, really hard to understand and shake off

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