Overseas customer reps!

[glennboston]

I am SO sick to death with these monstrous corporations (Especially EBAY and AMAZON) having their call centers for their CUSTOMERS, in foreign countries. I just spent 1 and 1/2 hours between 3 different EBAY customer service reps, that when I asked, said they were based in the Philippines.  First of all I am NOT xenophobic. Not in the least! But these **bleep** corporations make it so hard to EVEN get a hold of an actual person on a telephone. Then 9 times out of 10, they send you to an agent that is overseas, and have an accent and/or language barrier (or both!) that makes it almost impossible to have a conversation with them. I always tell these representatives that I can't understand them due to their accent. I always let them know that it is not their fault they have (for me) an accent. That is just the way speak. I'm sure they feel I also have an accent. (to them).  After all, we have slight accents in different parts of the U.S. But a lot of foreign accents are VERY difficult to understand. If these f*ing multibillion dollar corporations really cared about their "so called" CUSTOMERS, they would not send calls overseas, and make their customer struggle to communicate their problem or concern. Obviously they DON'T really give a sh*t about their customers at all! I truly feel sorry for these underpaid folks, who for the most, are very nice to you. They have to field calls all day long from usually angry customers to begin with, and then the customer getting even more angry during the call, because of the accent/language barrier. GREEDY **bleep** CORPORATIONS!  If you REALLY cared about your "CUSTOMERS", you would have your call centers here in the U.S. No, that doesn't guarantee you still won't get someone with a heavy accent. But it sure would be much less likely. To EBAY and AMAZON... 

[sin-n-dex]

@glennboston 

Wow.. just wow.

Make sure you don't call any customer service centres in Canada. We don't outsource to overseas, but all the reps where I work have an accent of some kind. (We hire people from native English speaking countries like India and Nigeria, but we still get customers like you who complain they can't understand us).

All our agents are fluent in English. Most agents on eBay call centre I've spoken to are also fluent in English (even if they are based in the Philippines).

C.

[sin-n-dex]

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@glennboston wrote:

I just feel that when a customer from the U.S. calls a call center, it should BE in the U.S.  Just like someone from say, Germany needs to call a service rep, that rep should be in Germany. Is that too much to ask of these massive corporations?  I don't think so. But thanks for your thoughts. G.B.

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There's lots of immigrants with accents that work at call centeres IN the United States.

C.

[sin-n-dex]

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@glennboston wrote:

Thanks. Yes they do their best to help you. It's purely understanding the heavy accent.  And as I said, I feel sorry for MOST C/S reps. Man, the crap they have to put up with AND poor pay!

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As a trainer (not a native English speaker, but I am fluent), I have  had to listen to calls.

I am very well aware of what they put up with.

C.

[maxine*j]

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@sin-n-dex wrote:

...  We don't outsource to overseas, but all the reps where I work have an accent of some kind. (We hire people from native English speaking countries like India and Nigeria, but we still get customers like you who complain they can't understand us) ... All our agents are fluent in English... 

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Yes, it's bad enough to be unilingual, as I am, but it's truly sad to hear people declare that they cannot understand even their own, one language if it's spoken with any accent other than their own (because everyone  has an accent).

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[sin-n-dex]

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@maxine*j wrote:

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@sin-n-dex wrote:

...  We don't outsource to overseas, but all the reps where I work have an accent of some kind. (We hire people from native English speaking countries like India and Nigeria, but we still get customers like you who complain they can't understand us) ... All our agents are fluent in English... 

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Yes, it's bad enough to be unilingual, as I am, but it's truly sad to hear people declare that they cannot understand even their own, one language if it's spoken with any accent other than their own (because everyone  has an accent).

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Previous to training, I had to take calls, and I'm disadvantaged to be a bit hard of hearing... sometimes it's difficult to understand a caller. I found by asking questions I could ferret out what I needed to know, even if the client was hard to understand. (Calls that originated from Southern Ontario, the majority of people had an outside North America accent). 

C.

[doc-holmes]

Here's the issue with not outsourcing...

Ebay can pay overseas agents pennies on the dollar. If they were to bring customer service back to the US, who do you think will pay for that? Ebay? Their shareholders? Nope, we will. While I'm ok with paying a little extra to have domestic customer service, many are not. It's all about the bottom line. 

[stephenmorgan]

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@glennboston wrote:

Thanks, but I'm "old school" and still prefer to TALK with people on a Telephone. Todays society has resorted to texting, e-mails, and electronic "chatting" on websites, and all sorts of non verbal communication. That is NOT for me. But thanks for your info. G.B.

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I am "old school" but "new School"

I would much rather have a written communication than a verbal conversation.  The reason being is a written communication is documentation of what was stated will happen to resolve issue.  A verbal conversation there is not always a record of what was agreed to resolve a issue.

[mam98031]

Ebay hasn't set up the Call Center as it was before the Pandemic yet.  So that means there is not a main location where there are people working to offer customer service.  This is why we can't call the call center.  We can request a call back, but we can't call directly into the Call Center.

[stephenmorgan]

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@southern*sweet*tea wrote:

https://www.ebay.com/help/contact_us?id=4822&st=10

In the left side bar click the automated chat. When the chat window comes up, type "agent" into the chat box.  Choose live chat.  This is what I use.  I'm old school, but absolutely hate phone calls.  I hate them, always have. I guess I have telephonophobia - I'll go see you or write you a letter before I call you.  I write down exactly what I want to say and still, as soon as I start talking all the other party hears is uhhh, uhhh, uhhh...I freeze up and sound like a muttering fool.

I was so happy when live chat was introduced.  The few times I've used it my issue was solved in moments, and you get a written transcript of the chat.

No straining to hear a conversation over a bad phone line, no accents to deal with, no forgetting what I was going to say, just an issue solved.  I don't care where the folks on the other end are located, all I know is they solved my problem.

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I have similar issues when ordering food from a drive up speaker.  I absolutely hate it.  The majority of the time I have to repeat myself several times.  I would much rather go inside to place order.

[stephenmorgan]

I have seen this several times before "phone reps are not eBay employees".

I have often been able to talk to an eBay Agent in the United States and things happened very quickly.  I have not needed to resolve an issue for a while.  Are the eBay USA Agents no longer available?

[femmefan1946]

And then there are those of us who speak English dialects.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueepin4b5YU

[femmefan1946]

They are, but not those that answer when we phone.

The social media accounts are covered by employees trained by eBay. They may include a call -back service by phone.

I got one of those when my Managed Payments accounts were being set up. The agent had a strong Southern US accent , but we managed.

Side note- Many Canadian companies have call centres in New Brunswick, our only officially bilingual province, because bilingual employees are easier to find, and because high unemployment suppresses wages.  It is a known hack if getting through is a problem to call the French line, and then switch to English when you get an agent.

[sin-n-dex]

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@femmefan1946 wrote:

They are, but not those that answer when we phone.

The social media accounts are covered by employees trained by eBay. They may include a call -back service by phone.

I got one of those when my Managed Payments accounts were being set up. The agent had a strong Southern US accent , but we managed.

Side note- Many Canadian companies have call centres in New Brunswick, our only officially bilingual province, because bilingual employees are easier to find, and because high unemployment suppresses wages.  It is a known hack if getting through is a problem to call the French line, and then switch to English when you get an agent.

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Our call centre has English, French and bilingual reps. Since I cover Southern Ontario and Alberta, I've been on the English line. We don't have too many French only reps, but the French and bilingual reps are in Montreal. We used to have an office in Moncton NB, but not anymore.

Because I was covering gaps in service, I got put on Nova Scotia time a few times (starting at 7am my local time), and I really find people in the Maritimes difficult to understand. I have similar complaints about parts of the US, but I lived in California for three years (where I learned to be fluent in English, but I speak Spanish too which is helpful), and I've gotten a lot better at understanding the various USA accents. (To me there's no accent in California, hearing that is native to when I learnt to speak English).

I've also travelled a lot, and manage to speak enough languages to get by where ever I was... (Spanish in South America and Mexico, French in Vietnam and parts of Europe, English... and although they speak English fluently in Sweden, I speak Swedish when I'm visiting - and in Norway and Denmark too because the languages are close... but Swedish is not my native language).

C.