TO Be annoyed with BT Customer service?!! The guys accent was so thick..i couldn't really understand?!

[baytree11]

Listen, i just finished talking to BT, the guy, probably in India, ( I am not British myself ok) but honestly, hes got very very thick accent and talked very fast, I had difficulity understanding him then he sounded very annoyed then he started getting very rude!! I was unhappy so i said to him, now you dont need to shout, i am a customer and I have a qusetion to ask, i want an answer from bt thats why i rang, pls let me finish my question first, then you can talk as you and i speaking at the same time isn't good..pls?! !!

NO offence to their accent, just very annoyed!

I recently had the same problem talking to someone from Liverpool. Agree - it was most frustrating.

sounds like he was rude, regardless of his accent. but totally agree - i am half indian and really struggle sometimes on the phone to call centres because of accents. In the main, I seem to speak to people from india and countries in that area, but i am sure that i would struggle with someone who had a thick scottish accent, for example. Tis the problem with dealing with some issues over the phone

you have a right to ask to speak to someone in the uk. The call centre workers do not have any ability to actually put an action on an account, they can only put notes on the system.
If you ask them straight away to put you through to a uk based worker they have to do it.

I have been known to wait for them to finish speaking, and then just say, very calmly, "Now - you need to speak up, and slow down, because I can't understand a word you're saying."

The abuse I have received back has been quite astonishing!

true, fair enough, i stay in Glasgow, for nearly 3 yrs now and still struggle with their accent sometimes!

its the person more than the accent i suppose. well, I asked one question then he asked me to hold, i asked another questions then he asked me to hold again...i wonder how much do they know their own products?

I regularly struggle with this. The line is often not completely clear and whilst their English is fabulous, the accent can be tricky to decipher. I avoid phoning helplines where I know they'll be based outside th UK.

It's a problem. No point denying it. I dread calling my bank's customer services because I can never understand what they are saying and they read from a script, which is hugely frustrating.

I was talking to a customer services guy from my internet company the other day. Obviously an Indian call centre. He was completely unintelligble (what I think was very, very formal English read from his script with a thick accent). It was like pulling teeth.

i have also found that 'forrin' call centre agents are less inclined to meet the customer halfway with a goodwill gesture. i once got a complaint all the way to the top indian training guy in dell and he agreed it was a problem getting indians in particular to give out discounts. he'd worked in america for yonks and had been brought in by dell specifically to deal with this issue... and then he gave me £250 off my (shite) laptop by way of apology.

i was basically asking about the international call plans, on BT website, there are 2 plans , international saver & international freedom plan, i asked if i can have both and he sounded annoyed!! he went, you've already signed up for internataional freedom so u get free calls for up to an hour each time and no more than 600mins each month, i said yes i know...i mean, u would want to save money if u can, wouldn't you? and i would probably talk for more than 600mins in a month so just wondering if i can have the saver plan as well?

i mean MNetters, its only a question, i am not greedy or anything,u would want to save money wouldnt you?? its only natural? then, he went, no, do u want me to cancel your Freedom plan then? is that what u want? i said, NO, did i ask u to?? why did u say that? the guy was very rude!?

I had problems with BT too although they pale into insignificance when compared to the ones I had with Tiscali (whose call cente is not only based in a foreign country but also at the bottom of a swimming pool if the line quality is anything to go by!)
I second what newspirits says though. The call centres never do what you ask in my experience. We were forced to return to BT after the debacle that was Tiscali and they set our monthly dd at £12 which was completely unrealistic. I rang and asked for it to be set at a more realistic £25. The guy said he'd put a note on my account and I would be contacted if it wasn't ok. I heard nothing and the dd remained at £12. After 3 months they wrote to say they were increasing dd to £55. I rang again and told them they were going from one extreme to the other. The guy again told me he'd put a note on my account asking for the dd to be amended to £25 and you've guessed it nothing happened!!!
Only ring them to ask to be put through to someone in the uk.

I have tried to sort shite out with both BT and Tiscali lately.
Both companies I only get any resolution from when I was finally put through to someone in this country.
If the companies want to employ people abroad to save them money they should give them better training and elocution lessons

VS the "red mist" still decends when any one even mentions Tiscali to me...I can feel my bp rising as I type!!!

Also worth mentioning CICAS... They are an arbitration service who deal with disputes with telephone/internet providers.Like Ofcom.
It was CICAS who eventually solved the dispute I had with Tiscali. Unfortunately you have to have followed the company's complaints procedure and have been in dispute for 3 months before they will intervene. In my case that meant 3 months with no telephone or internet and 3 months of banging my head on a wall trying to communicate with a communications company!!
I was awarded compensation but I certainly earned it!
Just mentioning CICAS wasn't enough but getting them involved did eventually do the trick.

I have this also with a bank.. hey i don't care where the call centre is.. or where the caller handler is from.. just get one who can speak english clearly.. oh and understand it clearly.

This was a persistant problem with Tiscali BCNS. The questions I was asking and the replys I got very often bore no relation to each other what so ever! That said the people I spoke to at their Milton Keynes Customer service office were not much better and they were uk based and not at the bottom of a swimming pool to the best of my knowledge!

a friend once told me she never dealt with companies with call centres in India because they were crap

I had every reason to believe her because she is a) a call centre supervisor and b) Indian

These companies want to upset customers rather than help them...have no idea why they set up a call centre in the first place, its customer svc right? if you dont want to give what customers want, then theres no point having a call centre, absolutely rubbish!

it has just taken my sister over 11 weeks to get her phone conected at her new house via BT. They couldnt have virgin so had to keep BT. The previous occupant had not informed them she had left so sister had to pass on their new address and wait 12 days for connection which was fine and sis accepted the reasoning that they had to check old tenant had left etc. So 12 days later BT did not connect. BIL rang them to be told no record of phone call and it would take 4 weeks to connect them! After nearly an hour he asked to be transferred to someone who could speak better english and was told it would be 4 days not weeks for the home hub etc to arrive and he was then given a conection date for internet and phone. GREAT!!!! NO on said day home hub had not arrived and phone not connected so yet another call to 'customer services' and another hour on phone to a bloke who BIL could not understand and even spelling names etc out did not help!!!!!!!!!!!! To cut a very long story short sis is now in her 13th week of living at new home, they were connected with phone on week 11, home hub arrived and internet connected on week 12 but they are still waiting for the new vision box thing despite booking it on week 2!!!!

Tiscali are a complete nightmare. I have refused to phone them and complain via e-mail as at least I have a written record of what's gone on (they are claiming I owe them money when I don't and that my broadband is still with them (it was cancelled in March).

AOL are no better. When I transfered to them in March (all for the sake of a free laptop-I'll know better next time). They had told me they couldn't connect me and then connected me without telling me or sending an installation package. I was passed round from pillar to post. I spoke to numerous people with various foreign accents who as you say work from a script. I would tell them my problem which was basically where is my installation pack but it obviously wasn't in some of their scripts as they kept terminating the call without telling me they were going to do it and passing me on to someone else. Eventually I got some woman whose only line seemed to be 'your broadband is fully connected and there are no faults reported'. She would not digress from this one sentance,would not listen to me, consistently spoke over me and would not let me finish what I was trying to explain. It was less the accent that was an issue rather than the obvious fact she did not understand the product.

Oh God i had the same problem. I couldn't understand a word he said. Now, i am not British myself and as you can see from my posts my english isn't perfect but i think if you work at such jobs you have to speak proper english and in clear accent.

He was also very rude and said to me that i've got problem with my English, and i said 'yes i 've got but i am the customer but you work in telephone Customer Service, you should't have'. I felt bad for saying this but..well...

Mind you my friend who is English took the phone to speak to him and she couldn't understand a word either