Yesterday I called my cable company to switch the IP address of my cable modem as I now have a block of 5 addresses and in order to use them, a change had to be made. I called support, negotiated the phone tree, and spoke to a woman with a heavy accent. I explained what I wanted done (my sales rep told me to call support to get the change made) and after explaining it a few times, I thought that she got it. She said she had to transfer me to a modem person and then when the modem person got on the line, he said “I understand you are having problems connecting to the Internet.” I told him that there was a communications issue and my connection was fine. So I got my cable modem reconfigured and things were fine.

I’m a bit tired of call centers that are either outsourced overseas or have people that aren’t native speakers. I have nothing against people speaking different languages; however, when I’m trying to explain a technical issue or get a problem solved, the language barrier makes it harder to get things done.