@j-o-h-n: Yeah, seriously. Though ironically Win7 is the least sucky of them all. Though that makes it even more delicious. Its like the CSR is saying \"Forget using Windows 7. You are stuck with the sucky previous version.\"

$\"user-pic\"$

katstermonster

@MostlyHarmless: You'd think they'd be falling all over themselves to upgrade as many people as possible from that disaster called Vista.

$\"user-pic\"$

katia802

@katstermonster: Okay, i'm probably the only person on earth to admit this, but Vista wasn't too much of a problem for me. Most likely because I only use my home computer for websurfing and gaming. What i've seen is that anyone who wants to use their computer for anything else was seriously mistreated by vista. Scared to upgrade to Win7 my comp is working right now

$\"user-pic\"$

MostlyHarmless

@katstermonster: If there is anything we have learned about MS in about 30 years, it is that they are sadistic people incapable of empathy. I think they might just enjoy seeing people squirm as they try to get out of Vista but cannot.

In related news, I switched over my second computer to Windows 7 as well. Phew. Thankfully I still use XP at work, and we'll directly jump over to Windows 7.

$\"user-pic\"$

katstermonster

@MostlyHarmless: I can't wait til we hop over to 7 at work. That's going to be a fiasco, though...

Oh, and my two lab computers are probably too ancient to run 7. *facepalm*

$\"user-pic\"$

MostlyHarmless

@katstermonster: Yeah, lab machines are no fun to work with. I resorted to plugging in my lappie in my final sem to do any work.

$\"user-pic\"$

chrisfromnl

I worked for an AT&T call center a few summers ago while I was in college and there was a direct number we could use to transfer customers to the number portability department. If the CSR mixed up the last two digits it went to an \"Adult Service\" line (Not AT&T). There were notes put up on every cubicle after someone made that mistake the first time.

3 replies

$\"user-pic\"$

nucwin83

@chrisfromnl: When I worked for Bellsouth DSL, the SC regional number on the fliers the company sent to all the call centers had two numbers transposed, resulting in a similar issue.

$\"user-pic\"$

pb5000

@chrisfromnl: I believe this switch happened to me a couple of times when trying to contact AT&T wireless.

$\"user-pic\"$

LadySiren is murdering her kids with HFCS and processed cheese

@pb5000: Suuuuure it did. ;)

$\"user-pic\"$

selianth

I swear sometimes 1-800 get their wires crossed in the phone system. One place I worked at had an 800 number that was one digit off from a Marriott reservations number, and when I told people they had reached the wrong company and confirmed what number they were dialing, they often told me they HAD dialed the correct number. (And the display on their phones confirmed it!) We consistently got the Marriott's phone calls (at least a couple a month).

However, it kindof seems like \"transferring to a different CS rep\" should have been an internal transfer, not one that required dialing a whole new number. So, weird.

1 replies

$\"user-pic\"$

misterfuss

@selianth:

I used to work at the front desk of a Marriott hotel back in the early 1990s. I remember getting complaints from customers when they tried calling the 800 number for the corporate offices that printed on the guest's bill. The problem was that it wasn't an 800 number but one that had a prefix of 801. When the guest would dial the number as an 1-800 number instead of 1-801 then they would get connected to a phone sex line.

$\"user-pic\"$

OmniZero

Transferred a call from an Indian call center to southern America? I wonder how much that was...

1 replies

$\"user-pic\"$

SkuldChan

@OmniZero: Standard rate - since they are using VOIP lines based in the US.

$\"user-pic\"$

moore850

You don't get rich by providing good tech support, you get rich by selling software and then getting people who call your support number to go away as fast as possible.

$\"user-pic\"$

evelus2

Anyone find it funny that everytime somebody calls a customer service number they always claim it was an \"indian person\" I must be the luckiest person in the world because in 6 years of having to call numbers for lazy customers I have never once recieved an \"indian\". Are we done with this stereotype yet? Most people don't even get Indian people they just say it because it is what's expected. Also an FYI every Sprint call center is HQ'd in America so if you get an \"indian\" person when you call Sprint thats a non-outsourced American job so quit complaining.

10 replies

$\"user-pic\"$

dantsea

@coren: I'm guessing that contractors handle inbound support calls for Microsoft, so if something out of band happens they'd need to dial externally to a different contractor or the company itself. However, many call centers do have the capability to set up the transfer as some sort of internal queue to prevent jackassery like that.

$\"user-pic\"$

coren

@dantsea: @cluberti: Yeah, what yall are saying makes sense, although it make sme wonder how many calls get dropped this way or rerouted improperly or somesuch.

$\"user-pic\"$

rosvicl

@evelus2: Yes, a lot of call centers are outsourced to India. The Indian rep I got for my health insurance was competent and helpful--and the only rep for that company who could pronounce my last name properly. (No, it's not an Indian name.)

If the reps are incompetent, okay, say so. But there are good, and bad, call center workers in just about any country in the world (there are probably still places without their own call centers).

$\"user-pic\"$

webweazel

@evelus2: I just love to get one of the Indians, with a super-thick accent who says his name is Bob Stevens. Yeah, right. I know it is hard for us STUPID americans to deal with long and/or foreign names, but at least give us a chance.

$\"user-pic\"$

katia802

@webweazel: According to friends from India who live here now, they do that so they don't have to listen to you garble their names.

$\"user-pic\"$

mazzic1083

@webweazel: Ever been to NYC? Plenty of American citizens there who have Indian, African, Italian, Irish, etc accents and they are still American. How would you know the difference of an Indian or NYC call center?

Only reason I say this is that people forget all the time that we have lots of perfectly legal immigrants in this country who still maintain their ethnicity and accents.

$\"user-pic\"$

cluberti

@mazzic1083: I doubt most of them would work for $100 a month answering tech support questions though. Speaking as someone who works for a company that outsources most of it's support to India, and in an industry that does the same across the board, when you call and get an Indian accented person on the line, he or she is in India.

$\"user-pic\"$

dragonfire81

@cluberti: Not necessarily. I worked in a North American call center that had several Indian reps working there.

$\"user-pic\"$

cluberti

@dragonfire81: If you're calling Microsoft, you are. Trust me on this ;).

$\"user-pic\"$

rellog321

@evelus2: The fact that many companies outsource specifically to India seems to have escaped you. I have on many occasions gotten the outsourced rep that has had a very discernable \"Indian\" accent...

$\"user-pic\"$

korybing

@evelus2: Not sure why you put \"Indian\" in quotes like that. An Indian accent is a pretty recognizable one, and I've gotten several throughout my history of dealing with CSRs. It's not a stereotype, many many many places outsource their CSRs to India, and it's a huge business over there.

$\"user-pic\"$

coren

@korybing: Well, because I don't know about you, but I certainly wouldn't know an Indian accent from say, a Pakistani accent or an accent from Bangladesh. Especially not over the phone.

$\"user-pic\"$

mmmsoap

@evelus2: Do you ever call after hours? Because that's when most callers get outsourced CSRs--when it's the middle of the night, or weekends, etc, in this time zone.

Also, why are you calling places for your customers? Unlikely that a business-to-business call is going to get the same level of (un)caring that at random I-can't-figure-out-how-to-turn-on-my-computer call to Dell/Microsoft/Linksys does. (That's not a dig at the OP, but at someone like my grandmother :P)

$\"user-pic\"$

Darkwish

This happens more often than you would think. When I worked at Packard Hell, a rep that worked there would transfer people to Pizza Hut. He even handed me his headset so I could listen when he did it. The guy spent 30+ minutes on hold for computer support then got transferred to Pizza Hut which them put him on hold again!

There's also the common newbie prank - a senior rep tells them to transfer something to extension 9911.

This is what happens when companies hire idiots, don't pay the few good reps well and treat them like crap.

$\"user-pic\"$

diasdiem

Oreck CSR: You're saying the product sucks? Then why are you calling to complain?

$\"user-pic\"$

GC

Man, this sounds like a STICKY situation.

Wait, what?

$\"user-pic\"$

Trai_Dep

But wait. Their perky ads made me think that they LIKED Teh Childrun...

1 replies

$\"user-pic\"$

Trai_Dep

@Trai_Dep: The sad thing is that, three weeks from now, this deluded guy will be boasting online of how Teh AWEsome MS is, and joining Apple bashing threads with naked, panting abandon.
Slaves... Slaves!

$\"user-pic\"$

WatchOutNow

Dood you just got Whopper'd..hahahah. What do you expect for 30 bones ? Go WinBlows!

$\"user-pic\"$

TheMonkeyKing

Yeah Digital River is not exactly owning up to this fiasco by explaining what you actually get for $29.99.

1) After the confirmation, order goes through you get an email link to a download site.
2) The download is for an application, not Windows 7 itself.
3) The application is a download program. I think they have it so in case your network or computer craps out for any reason, the install programs remembers where you stopped and picks up from there (3 gigs would be a pain in the ass to keep downloading from scratch).
4) The download is not an ISO, a file you can burn to a DVD to run independently of the system. No, you get files that will try to install Windows 7 inside the operating system you are currently running. Vista? Then it is an upgrade. XP? Beware as this will delete everything to install Windows 7 from scratch.
5) Also, if you ordered a 64-bit Windows 7 and you have a 32-bit Windows system, you will not be able to install or fix the download from crapping out (two are incompatible, however a 64-bit should be able to install down to a 32-bit system). THIS SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOTED ON THE SITE UP FRONT!

So yeah, some simple corner cases should have been run to see what to expect from people downloading this. Instead, it made for a very rough unexpected time when it shouldn't have.

2 replies

$\"user-pic\"$

ChuckECheese

@TheMonkeyKing: Several sites have described a fix that involves d/l another small program, and using that and some cmd lines to turn that exe into an iso that you can burn to a DVD. That's how I spent this weekend. That, and making moussaka.

$\"user-pic\"$

rickhamilton620

@ChuckECheese: I think they changed it so an ISO is now available....something they should have done the first time.

Lucky for me, I'll snag it from MSDNAA

$\"user-pic\"$

blueb

if you dont like being transfered to unrelated businesses, i'd advise not being rude to the csr should you ever use 411 for some reason.

searches are usually performed using just the first few letters... giving them lots of options for \"oops i selected the wrong one\" to get you off the line quickly... the least related option usually being their choice. being hostile when the rep is trying to find out which of the 3 embassy suites in town you want, having just their addresses when you only know \"its close to the river\"? well here... maybe the embassy of uruguay can help you. or this bbq place called embers.

and it was frequently done, with only roughly 20 minutes per week of calls being monitored per csr, and usually done on the same day and general time of day per week.

(complaining about having to press 1 for english \"when this is america!\", then asking for the number of a national company will nearly always get you to their spanish speaking customer service line option)

$\"user-pic\"$

glitterpig

There was a much weirder glitch where I worked - the building had a block of numbers, one office had a number that was within that block - but sometimes would get calls for an insurance company, often people being transferred from one of their internal lines to another internal line. Or you would call that office, even from within the building (where you only had to dial the last 4 digits) and get the insurance company.

Very weird. (Also kind of annoying, when people would start yelling at you about their insurance problems, no matter how many times you explained it was a wrong number.)

$\"user-pic\"$

SkuldChan

I've seen this sort of thing happen. Usually in call centers the emphasis isn't actually helping people - its meeting your stats.

One stat for instance - AHT (Average Handle Time) is the total average for how long each call was - including wrap time (where you fill out your case notes). In the call centers I've worked at - having an AHT a minute or two over the required average was regarded a far more serious issue than anything else I ever did.

So how to reduce AHT quickly? Transfer calls into other queues, your friends cell phone - stuff like that. If the call center doesn't track dropped calls (where the agent hits the release key) - simply hanging up will reduce your AHT. I never did any of this stuff (I felt sorry for the people on the phone), but I know one guy who did and got away with it for years until someone caught him in the act for it.

$\"user-pic\"$

guspaz

Dell's enterprise support once transferred me to an outside number. The poor woman on the other end of the line was terribly confused as to why I wanted to replace the motherboard of an Optiplex, (or what an Optiplex was) until she realized that I had been transferred from Dell.

$\"user-pic\"$

coren

I'm surprised that Microsoft has to transfer to an outside number to get you to the right department (which is the only way I can see this happening - they don't share a phone tree with a vacuum support line). You'd think that even if they make consumers dial different lines they could still transfer to them internally...

1 replies

$\"user-pic\"$

cluberti

@coren: It's more likely the first call goes to a (very, very cheap) outsourcer who would then transfer you to a \"real\" Microsoft employee if they can't just get you to go away easily. Since the outsourcer and Microsoft would not be on the same phone system, they would literally be calling an outside line to transfer you - that's my educated guess.

$\"user-pic\"$

Warble

At my old job, we had this ancient phone system that I occasionally had to man. I discovered that if you tried to transfer calls from the receptionist's phone to certain people by dialing their extensions, rather than using their designated button, the system would throw the caller into a fail state hold where nobody could retrieve the call. I got chewed out for this, of course.

Also, the hold music was this weird music box muzak version of Let It Be, and the institutional memory regarding how to change it had been lost years ago. So you'd be stuck listening to that until you eventually decided to hang up.

That was a really weird place.

$\"user-pic\"$

Razor512

It happened to me once when I called acer because I received 6 defective monitors in a row, after which the CSR's would transfer me to random places like restaurants and stuff. (when I was able to submit a report to the BBB, I was then contacted by a PR person who fixed the problem right away and sent me a working monitor)

1 replies

$\"user-pic\"$

Razor512

@Razor512: wanted to make a few corrections, after I kept calling for faulty monitors, they eventually started to constantly transfer my call to other random places, after i kept getting transferred to random places, I contacted the BBB

$\"user-pic\"$

MooseOfReason

I had a problem installing the student discount Windows 7 too, but then I made a bootable flash drive and it installed just fine.

$\"user-pic\"$

mtoedtli

I installed Windows 7 Home Premium and had problems with activation. When I called the 800 number I got a call center on the other side of the world, and you know what...they helped me so much. I was on hold for less than 2 minutes and got to talk with actual humans. The call centers overseas are doing a much better job of training their staff at handling problems. I gotta give Microsoft props for their outstanding customer service this time.

$\"user-pic\"$

IamBort

\"What does this thing do?
It sucks in air
Its definitely sucking!\"

$\"user-pic\"$

Foneguy

Done with the stereotype? I don't think so. When I call a customer support center, I always ask where I have reached. 9 out of 10 times, it is India, regardless of the time of day. I think it is pretty safe to assume that \"Mark\", \"Fred\", or \"Bill\" is really \"Narain\", and is an actual Indian. Oh and lying to me about your name is not a good way to begin our relationship. Corporate America outsourcing to any foreign country = FAIL.

November 13, 2009 4:37 PM

1 replies

$\"user-pic\"$

better business burro

@Foneguy: You're absolutely right! I work in a call center in Canada where we have tons of foreign coworkers with thick accents and long, unpronounceable names. They all go by things like \"Anne\", \"Lynn\", etc.

A lot of the completely Canadian reps have a phone alter-ego too, though. I know a couple that speak perfect English and have completely average names, but introduce themselves as a completely different average name to customers. As long as they have a supervisor's approval, it's okay. So, you might be getting lied to more than you think!

$\"user-pic\"$

Oranges w/ Cheese hates what Christmas has become

I tried reporting a suspicious activity to a crime stoppers crime line once and was transferred to a police department in Ohio. I'm in florida.