I wonder when all those companies last year decided to outsource their customer and technical support services overseas that they ended up playing a big gamble with their customer service ratings and public perceptions.
Surely you remember the saga of Bangalore Joe and my problems with Delta’s customer support machine. Well, you can add another company to the “Speak English Damnit!” list.
Goddamn Kensington Technology Group.
Now I want to like Kensington…hell, I fucking love their products. I’ve got the surge protectors, the screen glare reducers, the monitor wipes…you name it. They make some really smart and really simple computer peripherals and accessories. Along the lines of such a glowing opinion of them, I recently purchased two wireless desktops from them; one for home and one for work. I downloaded the latest driver from the site and proceeded to install the wireless desktop at home first. Everything works great (typing on it right now) except for the 19 hotkeys along the top of the keyboard which are supposed to control the browser, a media player, e-mail, etc. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the advertised driver on the site is version 1.2, but when it’s installed, it says the version is 1.0.1. So a call is in order, right?
First of all, their hours suck. 7:30am – 4:30pm Pacific time is not cute when you get home at 7:00pm Eastern time from work each day. Most customer service places stay open until at least 8pm. Of course, you can’t call from the office because you have to be in front of the computer. Makes sense, really. So I call and who should I get on the phone? Bangalore Joe. He gives me some half-ass remedy like “try restarting your computer”. I do it while he’s on the phone and I tell him it’s still not working.
“Hold pleasea, suh.”
And hangs up.
I call back and reach a different guy and have to re-explain my situation all over again. He gives some MORE half-ass remedies like “try uninstalling then reinstalling your computer” and “make sure you have the latest version of the driver”, all the while either calling me by my last name or grossly mispronouncing my first name, and then laughing. Asshat. After all of this, the hotkeys still don’t work. Once I start talking in computer jargon and he keeps asking me what certain things mean, it’s at this point that the call becomes pointless because I KNOW MORE ABOUT COMPUTERS THAN HE DOES. After 20 minutes of bullshit circular reasoning, he told me he’d put me on the phone to his supervisor.
And hangs up. Goddamn long distance. I called back, but it was after the normal business hours and I received a recording that ALSO hung up on me.
Today I was determined. I got off work a little early, and made it home to talk to the customer service reps. We ended up chatting for over an hour with him telling me that I needed to “upgrade my system”. I told him I have a P4 box with 1 GB of RAM running Windows XP SP2 with the latest upgrades. What the fuck do I need to “upgrade my system” to over a faulty keyboard driver? Then he just starts making up shit.
“Well uh, it-uh could-uh be da sound card. Or da veedieo card. More sound.”
“What the fuck does a sound card have to do with the keyboard?”
“Yes suh.”
“Yes sir what?”
This went on for much longer than I’d care to explain, but suffice it to say that at the end of the call he got very snarky and full of attitude. He was almost on the receiving end of getting cussed the fuck out. I told him I installed the same keyboard at work with the IT Services department and had the same problems with the hotkeys. And those systems are top of the line. So I asked to speak to Bangalore Joe’s supervisor, but he refused!
“Why-a do you need to speak to suhpeevayser?”
“That’s none of your goddamn business.”
“He’s-uh in a meeting.”
“Let me speak to another supervisor than.”
“No.”
…the fuck? What you mean NO? Then Bangalore Joe tells me to uninstall the program and reinstall it (like I hadn’t tried that already) and to have a nice weekend and call back Monday and hangs up on me in mid sentence.
Inconvenient tech support hours, unskilled East Indian tech support workers who have plenty of attitude but can barely speak English (USA! USA! USA!) and extremely long wait times. Way to fuck it up, Kensington!
They may have outsourced their tech support line but corporate headquarters are still here. Fire off a letter to the CEO, sharing your dissatisfaction.
Aye aye, cap’n!
I say let’s all take a field trip to India…I’m ready. Get the crew. We got beef!
i just called three different rental car companies checking prices on friday. in every single one, the CSR had an indian (or possibly pakistan) accent. i wasn’t in the mood to consider this critically at the moment, politically and such… but one of the calls was just awful, i could hardly understand a word they were saying because of that crazy ‘poor overseas connection’ echo effect. anyhow, all three companies had the same prices, so i ended up going with the one whose customer service number had the clearest connection.
Your blog is outta control. Really, do you have any idea how good it is? I’m ready to buy your material. Where can I get it? Seriously.
Boy, i feel you on the overseas thing, but have you tried the customer service here in ATLANTA recently. This has got to be some kind of customer service hell. Really, i saw Satan working a phone bank the other day. (Okay, so he was flogging the CS rep, but you get what i mean.)
Can I add Handspring to that list…I have one of their PDA…and had pretty much the same conversations that you have had with them.