Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for May 31, 2015

I’m in agreement with, Rat, for once

I’d settle for just the “in this country” part!

I just want to speak with some one I can understand!

Rat for president!

That is me to a “T”. Go Rat. For once I am in agreement with Rat.

I once got a cat on the phone, all it could say was meow meow meow meow meow, I think it was saying… not now?

Agree totally.

I recently had to call a major telephone company about the loss of a T1 circuit to my own company. We had a contact number, and it was answered promptly, but it turned out that they could not help us. They advised us to go to the company’s web site.When I went to the web site, I could not find a contact phone number or even an Email address. I had to fill out a contact form asking that somebody call us back. Two hours later, they did call back, but they couldn’t help us.I’m sorry to say, though, that if you call my own company for tech support you may not get anybody either. When you have the same people answering the phones and actually fixing the equipment, something’s got to give.

Best. Idea. Ever.

And hiring someone who speaks English would be nice.

Bsqnbay, I agree! Why do they ever think we would believe their names are Dennis or Denise. They lie to you up front, so how can you trust the rest of what they say.

It is more efficient their way. And helps you become more creative in finding solutions to their problems.

Congrats on today’s strip Mr Pastis ! We can all relate to this issue! :-O

Tell it, Rat!

No worse than trying to get someone from the IRS in this country to pick up the damned phone and speak intelligible English when you call them. Guess we have to give the IRS credit for hiring domestic incompetents to make things worse for us. “TAX AMERICAN!”

Today we see Rat get in touch with his inner Everyman!

Electricity went out last night for 9 hrs. Called the lady robot. She said they’d take care of it. I was lonely before I called her, even lonelier afterwards.

Don’t like the canned music while you’re waiting to talk to someone.

The worst are the “voice recognition” ones who can’t understand a word you say. You say “I need repairs” and they say “I’ll get you right to a salesman.”

Then they all ask you to put in all this personal information, (your account number, your social security number, your blood type, your product number which is usually hidden on the bottom of the item in the smallest print imaginable). Once you dial or type all that in the first thing a real person does is ask you all that crap again only to have them say “I’m sorry we don’t handle those issues. I’ll transfer you to someone who does.” If your lucky that your call is not dropped during the transfer, you then have to tell them all the information again.

And God forbid if your call is routed overseas where it goes into a verbal dead letter office with no way to register a complaint about the service or the unintelligible representative on the other end!

you’re not the only person to complain about the robotic voices and many-hour holds, Rat

Amen to all that. And, when private companies can have robotic voices that are hard to tell from actual humans, why does the voice on the Emergency Warning System, which sometimes interrupts commercial broadcasts, sound like a hard-to-understand robot from a cheesy 1950’s movie? It’s the 21st century now. Time to upgrade.

Amen, Rat!

I’ve always wondered why/how the tech support people are always named Kevin and always speak with an Indian subcontinent accent…. “‘Allo, this Kebin, kan I he’p you pliz?”

Absolute truth!

I don’t mind the option to press one for Spanish, but why do I have to press anything for English?

Even after giving my name, I am constantly called “Mom” or ""Mommi" which might be a variant of “Ma’am”? Either way, if you take the time to ask my last name, please use it: other companies’ reps use it throughout the transaction, I feel more connected that you are working with me, and I am not your mom or whatever.

Under Obama care, that wait time has decreased to 24 hours.

Amen Rat!!

When someone with a Tagalog or Indian accent tries to tell me he’s in the states, I ask him what time he’s got on his watch. Yes, I get proven right, but then they hang up on me in embarrasement. I still think it’s worth it.

YESSSSSSS!!!!!

Thank you, Rat!

Truer sentiments have rarely been expressed.

I am a live, non-robotic human being who answers customer calls in the US.

I get tired of people who don’t listen rudely asking “Are you a machine?” I know they didn’t listen because recordings do not start with “Hello, my name is…”

One time, I answered “Yes.”

Sadly, there is a tool being developed to make our jobs easier and it has all the ear marking of similar tools used to outsource previous tech jobs to India and the Philippines.

We need to get Rat the T-shirt that has a picture of Abraham Lincoln with the caption that reads “What do you mean press 1 for English ?” …

I’m with you there.

I can’t say I understand Rat’s anger as I live in the UK and I’m always connected to a real person. Apart from those nuisance calls of course but then I don’t answer those anymore.xxx

Two things: I have had CS reps with clearly Indian accents named Michelle and Ashley; I always want to say, “Why don’t you pick something that could be ethnic, like Anna or Maria?”Also, last week I was on hold to an ISP for 45 minutes. It rang once and went dead. I called back, and , while on hold, went to the website and got the issue fixed on chat. I did tell them about the call when I got the email request for an evaluation.

I got to see this in the Inquirer yesterday

They speak a sort of English and have to be able to read whatever the script is on the computer screen. That practice was actually taken over from the tele-porn industry. After all the employees, who have no benefits and work for a few dollars a day, are hired as a favor to some power broker. They just don’t need to know what the words mean.

If you know a company you need to deal with has out-sourced some of their call centres, ask if they are one of them and demand they transfer you to the real company. A lot of the out-sourced companies do the service on the cheap and you would not get the service you need.

I’ve learned that you can cut through a lot of the “options” and get to a real person if you press zero.:Of course, that doesn’t guarantee that you’ll get a person who knows what to do about anything.

Totally non-political. I don’t think there is even one person living in the USA who doesn’t share Rat’s sentiments.

I dunno. I’m getting to where I’d rather talk to a computer that speaks my language than a real person who doesn’t.

Poor,, dear rat! He sacrificed himself to vent about the robotic heavily or accented “help line.”I don’t see that anyone has mentioned the main culprit, the man in the mansion on the hill who needs the $$$ saved by meager outsourcing, to pay for his yachts.

Priorities, priorities. We, Giganto Stuff, Inc., would rather sell our self-destructing junk to lots more people rather than try to make it work for people whose money we’ve already got. So why not outsource Customer Service to some pennies-a-day schlub in the slums of urban India?

The human could be in “this country”, which ever nation you’re in (given where Pastis lives in real life, can guess which country Rat means but I’m feeling generous here), and still not speak the language you speak as a first language. Though it always seems more likely they don’t speak you speak as their first language but their somewhere else in the world. One reason why so many hate dealing with tech services, the language barrier.

I recently had to listen to the same piece of smooth jazz on a loop, which sounded like it was recorded from a blown speaker, for approximately 2 hours at a time, for three consecutive days.

Yes, it was a government run system.

“your call is very important to us. please hold and a representative will be with you shortly” (30 seconds later) “your call is very important to us. please hold and a representative will be with you shortly” (30 seconds later) “your call is very important to us. please hold and a representative will be with you shortly” ………… 1 1/2 hours later (no lie) "hi this is _______, thank you for holding. What can I help you with?line goes dead.dial tone.- ahhh the excitement of trying to reach customer service.

That usually means English isn’t a first language.

I totally identify with this. Not only robots talking at us, but also “Customer Services” which is a robot you have to talk to.Next time I’m stuck on the phone with one of these pesky robots I’ll turn up this cartoon and at least have a laugh at it.

Hundreds of strips are about the idiocy of telephone customer service, but this says it all.