I don't know about you, but it drives me nuts to be on hold. The cable company, water company, phone company, bank, etc... It's like they KNOW I live overseas and are in cahoots with the long distance provider to ensure I spend a fortune. Even locally, I'm always on hold.. and most of the time when I do get to the right department, we can't understand each other.
I usually only have a 10 second question, that requires a 30 second answer.. however, I have to key through a series of prompts, only to get to the wrong person (even if you keyed in right!), then hold again while transferring to talk to that person as they are experiencing "usually high call volumes." Is anyone else frustrated by this? I feel like the entire world is slowly being replaced by an automated system.
For example. right now I'm on hold with HSBC in the States. I only need to link my US and Malaysia accounts, which they require you do over the phone. I've been listening to their lovely hold music, mixed with static, for 33 minutes now. Ryan's going to love this month's phone bill. Wait a minute, my phone just died. Wonderful.. that was all for nothing.
If you call somewhere in Malaysia and they can't understand you they just hang up on you. It's actually pretty funny. At first I was furious - "did he just hang up on me?!" I'd yell, but after time you just get used to it and hope someone else who speaks english answers when you call back.
I've been trying to set up our house phone for two weeks. I've called numerous times, and was told the documents would be emailed to me that day.. but nope. In Malaysia you have to apply for a home phone account, then they come install it, then it takes another few days to activate it. And really, there's no guarantee it will work. If I didn't just laugh at this stuff I would be going insane.
Another example of stellar customer service is our water delivery company. The day our first order was supposed to arrive, it didn't. I called their office, and they had to call the driver. The driver confirmed he delivered it. So I'm standing in the service entrance (tempted to take a picture of the empty hallway for the lady on the phone who's telling me it's there), and telling her there is no water in sight. After a few rounds of this, which took hours, no one could figure out where the water was. It's not like it could've been misplaced easily.. we're talking about 10 (5-gallon) bottles, and a large dispenser. The buildings in our condo development can be a bit confusing, there's block A1, A2, and A3, then it goes to B1, B2, B3, and so on... we're in block B3. After two days of no water I took matters into my own hands and went to the connecting buildings to see if they dropped it off in the wrong building. Yep, there it was in B2. The security guys moved it for me and we finally have water. holy moly...
Deep breath.. trying to remember I'm not in America where things appear at the snap of a finger, but as you can tell today it was hard to forget : )
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