My first-hand experience with outsourcing to India

[priller]

And it wasn't a good one.

I got my hair cut yesterday. I paid with my credit card. My card is rather well used by now, and recently several stores have had trouble reading the magnetic strip on the back, and that's what happened this time. The cashier then entered the card number manually, but somehow she ended up *crediting* my card instead of charging it. She then tried to back out the transaction and couldn't figure out how to do that.

Then she called the customer support number for the card reader. To make a long story short, after 15 minutes of effort, they still could not figure out how to get rid of the credit and simply charge my card. She eventually said, "I have customers, I can't spend any more time on this right now" and hung up. I said, "Look, I've got cash, I'll give you money for the haircut and the credit, will that work?" "Yeah," she said, "that will be fine. That person didn't speak English very well." "Indian accent?" I asked. "Very heavy Indian accent."

Outsouced Indian customer support in action.

[7th_Sephiroth]

1. yeah

expect to never understand "help desk" people again, how can you get help if the person doesent even speak english?

[Atlant]

2. Umm, ...

> how can you get help if the person doesent even speak english?

They speak English; they simply don't speak 'Murican. :-(

I'm no fan of outsourcing (as I supervise exactly such an
out-sourcing project and it has cost my co-workers their
jobs, no matter how management spins it), but please, give
credit where credit is due.

By the way, "doesn't" has an apostrophe in it, and only one "e".

Atlant