More chatline than call centre
Mate from Uni told us how he worked on a Tarot card line run by some shifty sorts - basically got some students in to answer the phones and spin some BS. This was in the early '90s when all these phone lines were ultra-premium and totally unregulated (which on reflection they probably still are).

My mate takes a call from a woman who is having relationship issues, she says she's unsure about whether or not she should leave her bloke, he's been sleeping around etc.

So after a few minutes (get them talking so the £££s tick over) my mate says "I'm looking at the cards now, and they're saying you should definitely leave him".

The woman says "I can't do that - he'll fucking kill me. And if he finds out I've phoned here, he'll find you and fucking kill you too..."

"Oh... hang on" says my mate "... that last card was upside down. That means you should stay with him. Thanks for calling - bye!"
(Capo, Sun 6 Sep 2009, 23:46, Reply)

Automated cold calls
Someone on here must know how you end the call?
Please :)
Even though I'm registered with TPS I get a lot of these.
Recorded message that you cant stop, you hang up, pick the phone back up a minute later and its still droning on telling me Ive won a holiday to Florida or somewhere.
I was told press 3 and it stops, but it doesnt.
(insomniac-surfer oh go on then, just this once, Sun 6 Sep 2009, 23:20, 4 replies)

Not quite a call center but ...
After a few beers me and a mate used to call up people from the phone book with the surname "Bullet"

My favourite went:

(Ring ring ring ring)
Them: "Hello?"
Me: "Mrs Bullet?"
Them: "Yes?"
Me: "You're fired!"
Then: "... Thank you." (in a dead pan heard it 1000 times before voice)
(fatboybubba, Sun 6 Sep 2009, 23:00, 3 replies)

Customer care line for a company that sold Feminine Hygiene
For a while I worked in the Technical / Quality department of such a company. They made Tampons and Sanitary towels, and from time to time we'd get asked to help out answering some of the more unusual questions that the customer helpdesk hadn't heard of before.

There were a few we saved up and were quoted whenever the drink started flowing. Suffice to say, you needed to be pretty unshockable.
For a company of this sort, you'd be surprised how many men phoned up

One example (Cleanish)
Q: I'm going on a safari holiday, and I want to take tampons with me for first aid purposes. Is this safe?
A: Yes, plenty on the internet about this sort of thing. Quite popular with US marines in Iraq. (So I'm told)- Tampons make very good emergency field dressings for gunshot wounds-Well thats how they were first invented in WW1

One Example (Just wierd)
This involved a bloke who wished to indulge with his girlfriend in some games that involved pulling things out of her and shoving it into him.
The gist of the advice was:
a) Don't eat them (Used or unused)
b) If they've been used by her for a longish time they're going to be too soggy to use on you
c) If they've been up you sir, for gods sake don't pack them back into her
d) Lubricant may help
e) If you bite the string off you're going to have to get them out the difficult way.

The public are a very odd lot
(Sir Tainley Barking Ezekiel 23:20, Sun 6 Sep 2009, 22:31, 1 reply)

Billing....
my flatmate has recently got a job working for a Mobile Phone company billing dept. some of the classic tales of "Billing Enquiries" he comes home with include.....

- The Indian gentleman that was adamant that calls to all his relatives in India (£600 worth) should, in fact, be included in his free minutes

- The gentleman who was livid that he had been forced to pay for a Game he didnt download, who subsequently got the money for the game refunded. And a complete lifetime block of Mobile internet on his account in case another game was downloaded "by accident"

and my personal favourite...

- The son who had been calling Gay Chat Lines from his mums mobile, and his mum who called up querying the calls, only to learn that her son was gay from a Call Centre worker.
( Mister B is eating an icanhazcheezburger with lmaonaise, Sun 6 Sep 2009, 22:26, Reply)

The Bank....
Aside from the obvious calls from "your bank" asking you to confirm some security details by giving them all of your personal and financial adivce ever, i did get cold called by someone from my Bank (my actual bank...Lloyds TSB) trying to sell me a personal loan....

Lloyds TSB: I can see that you have a Credit Card with us sir. Did you know if you were to take out a personal loan you can pay off your credit card and then pay off the loan at a cheaper rate...

Me: OK, draw me up a repayment plan based on a loan of £2000 then please. I'd like to pay back £100 a month.

LTSB: I can't authorise a loan of £2000 sir as your Credit Card is only at £1600 and we need to know what the other £400 would be for.

Me: Right, pretend I've told you I'm buying a bike that rounds it up to £2000.


LTSB: Right, a new bike it is. OK sir, so an estimated repayment of £100 a month, £2000 loan, blah blah blah would give you an interest rate of 23.1% APR.

Me: Ok, and I havent got a clue, so could you tell me what is the current interest rate on my Credit Card?

LTSB: ..... silence ...... mumblings.... clickings...... ummm, its currently 17.9% sir.

Me: Riiiight. So then, if i take a minute to think about it, this whole call has been a waste of mine and your time really hasnt it? Thanks but no thanks, I won't be switching from my 17.9% Credit Card to a 23.1% Loan. Theres 10 minutes of my life I can never get back, at least you're getting paid. Can I go now?

LTSB: ... mumbles.... Sorry sir. Have a good day

I did.



Apologies for length, I was pretending it was about 50inches long and red!
( Mister B is eating an icanhazcheezburger with lmaonaise, Sun 6 Sep 2009, 22:20, 1 reply)

Hello, thank you for calling British Gas, calls may be retarded for training purposes.....
While at Uni all those years ago I worked for British Gas in their outgoing maintenance sales centre near Glasgow.

It was easy money, 3 hrs a night, 5 nights a week and it was on my way home from Uni. The easiest £600p/m I have ever earned (apart from that other time of which we won't speak). People registered their interest on t'interweb or by filling out coupons in the Radio Times and we called them back, took £15 a month of them and they got peace of mind with a total care package for their antique central heating systems. No cold calling involved.

One cold January evening, after I had pissed all over an exam at Uni I was in a bad mood. About halfway through the shift I made a call to a gent from Birmingham. It started badly when I mispronounced his surname, he then proceeded to call me a Scottish d*ckhead for calling him at the ungodly hour of 7pm and went further on to slag the Scots, Welsh and any other non-English races that happen to work in Call Centres. Normally I would have said my goodbyes at this point, and hung up, but not this time.... I decided to tell him what I thought of him, his mother, his dog and that as I had his address in front of me I would be down the next morning to kick him up and down New Street (being the only road in Brum I knew at the time). Then I hung up.

I thought all was well until about a week later, when my team leader came over to ask me if I would gather my things and follow her to listen to a recording of my calls. Needless to say, me and the good people at Centrica parted company about 2 weeks later once I felt I had milked my paid suspension long enough.
(badbob82 actually has mates called Rex and Wendy, Sun 6 Sep 2009, 18:51, 3 replies)

Directory enquiries
I worked in a call centre once - it was for charities and it made my soul go black and I have no funny stories from my time there. However, I have a mate who is an obnoxious drunk twat and he had a moment of inspiration after too much sauce one evening.

He rang up 118 118 and asked to be put through to 118 247. The kindly operator declined the request, claiming it was against their interest to put him through to their competitor. A bout of verbal sparring ensued in which inevitably (does this happen in normal enquiries?) the supervisor was summoned. Again, the supervisor confirmed that it was against their policy to put him through to a competitor. Negotiations ended with the happy result of reimbursment for the call in the form of a cheque a few days later, but no connection to 118 247.

This friend of mine went through a phase of calling directory enquiries when pissed - not healthy for his liver or bank balance, but we got many laughs from it. Other highlights included the late night search for Father Christmas: there are none in Lapland, but the operator found a few on the east coast of America.
(tim dog, Sun 6 Sep 2009, 18:07, 2 replies)

If you've ever been cold called and offered stocks by a "boiler room" (or "spankshop") in Barcelona
Then they were probably using a phone and PC I sold them, on a network I installed - sorry about that.

Mind you, I've got a nice house (€420,000 with €72k left to pay) and car (Accord 2.4 iVtec Executive - paid off) out of it, so I'm fucking laughing.

Length? Depends, you can get the parasites off the phone in seconds if you ask them if Bruce Miller is their boss.
(nobbyd is wanking furiously to industrial grade porn on, Sun 6 Sep 2009, 15:49, 27 replies)

Selling Advertising Again...
When I was on local papers, taking public calls, the most sensitive type you could get was people placing Death Announcements and Obituaries. There's nothing worse than an angry bereaved relative ringing to say you've spelt their dear departed's name wrong, or mangled the meaningful bit of verse they wanted to include.

As a result, there was a general rule that you eliminate all doubt before the thing runs: read it through back to them, check any spelling, even email or fax a copy to them to check through.

Sometimes, there's things you don't notice until the ad's ready to run though, and you have to make a last minute call back to the family to check.

One day, we had just such a situation when there were a few people clustered round a screen as I wandered back from the coffee machine, and I joined them and asked what was up.

'Read this' I was told.

I was looking at a fairly lengthy Obit for a young guy who'd died in a car crash the week before. The family had included a poem which had obviously been written by them, and which whilst terrible from any sort of technical or artistic viewpoint, was quite touching in that it clearly meant a lot to them, however, the last stanza read:

'You really loved your car,
It was your little toy,
You used to clean it all the time,
And drove it every day'

'The rhyme doesn't work...' I muttered.

'That's what everyone thinks. I'm going to have to call them back.'

So she gets on the phone and dials the mother. We don't cluster round as we all have to get back to our desk and back on the phones, but we're curious about the outcome and are all listening to the call from our end.

To our surprise, our operative calls up, says hello to the mother, then just says 'I just wanted to let you know for sure the ad will run tomorrow... OK Mrs. ______... Yes, we'll send you a copy... Goodbye.'

'You didn't check it?' we ask.
'No need.'
'Eh?'
'They're from Dudley.'

Now read it again in a Black Country accent and see how the rhyme works...
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Sun 6 Sep 2009, 14:34, 13 replies)

Finally, something decent to post on my b3ta birthday
One day I was in what has been termed my "Thrush" mood - in that, while in said mood I'm an irritating c**t. For example:

"Good morning, you're through-"
"Why isn't my broadband working?!?"
"Good morning," I repeated more forcefully, "you're through to James at Sales, can I take your order please?"

The smarter ones of you may realise that I'm in the sales department, and don't generally deal with fixing things. This fella didn't.

"Why isn't my broadband working?!?"
"Solar flares."
"Well, you'd better- what?"
"Solar flares. Violent explosions of electromagnetic radiation from our nearest star, in this case the sun. It's been known to disrupt the flux capacitors at the exchange."
*ding* Dummy mode on.
"Oh...right..."
"It's been proven recently, under Tennant's theorum. It's why there's less bees around lately."
"Ah yes, I've noticed that!"

By this time those waiting for calls (almost everyone in earshot) had started to listen in and conceal giggles.

"Of course, it could just be due to dryness on your mains socket. Have you got something to moisten them with?"
"Er, like what?"
"Well, something protruding, that's generally usually damp?"
"Oh, I could use my tongue!"

It was at this point my colleague with a conscience slapped me round the back of my head and told me to behave.

"Yeah, that might work. I'll tell you what, why don't I get you through to broadband service, they might be able to help?"
"Oh yeah, I was going to go to them first, but I thought sales might be better."

I transferred him. Electrocution's too good for them.

Then there was this chap:

"I'm fed up with talking to those bloody Pakis in India!"

I wasn't allowed to call him an idiot on the phone. Despite my protestations that he was a complete berk, apparently it wouldn't be professional to point out the customer's shortcomings. My response of "but how else are they going to know?" was dismissed.
(jamesthegill opens new tabs with his scroll wheel, Sun 6 Sep 2009, 13:57, 5 replies)

The lament of the technical support.
I have never actually been a call centre employee but in the course of my working life, I have usually been on hand to offer technical support in my chosen (willingly chosen as well I admit) life in the hifi industry.

Hifi is a curious beast to try and solve problems on the phone. A very simple system of amp, CD player and speakers can still involve three different manufacturers who at no stage in their development schedules ever envisaged their product being connected to the other. Furthermore, "obsolete" is a relative term for us- products from the 1970's can still perform well in a system otherwise comprised of new bits so for the hapless bod on the front line, it is not simply a case of knowing what your product may do when connected to the offerings of company A but the offerings of company A going back to a point where you were still an ovum.

And yet- this is the touching and bewildering thing. People who ring up genuinely believe that you will know every product to which they refer- its vital statistics, connection set and sonic characteristics as if you owned it yourself. Its an interesting reverse to the situation that has often been described in this QOTW where hapless call centre employees are patronised to within an inch of their life by people absolutely sure that they know they are right- we have people regard us a sort of Delphic oracle of audio. Their faith that we will know what the issue is and where in the system it might reside is sometimes a little unnerving.

Not that we don't get acts of almost Olympic stupidity. Our loudspeakers are not too hard to power but neither are they designed to work on the feeble gnat’s fart of an output from a single ended valve amp. If you try this and drive it too hard, the amp will explode and usually take a few drivers with it by way of retaliation. If you then phone up and express surprise and disappointment that this has happened, we really aren’t going to be too sympathetic. Nor will we fix it under warranty- it is the same as crashing a new car not it failing on you. People are increasingly used to the concept that everything will work with everything else- most items with a USB port will talk to a computer for example- whereas we have an industry where not only might it not work, it might actually damage the items to try it.

Then of course there are the classics. Leave enough rope and many will hang themselves. Non committal “uh huh’s” and “right” can usually bridge the gap between “my amp stopped working for no reason” to “I was having a party and my amp finally gave up at 3am after we poured Amstel into it.” Likewise, whatever you may think, The Sale of Goods act is unlikely to offer you much recourse because “the front panel light is too bright.” Equally, warranties kick off from the moment you left the shop. If you did have it in storage from new for two years (and why the shuddering fuck would you do that anyway?) and it has now gone wrong (usually because “storage” means a damp garage) you are still out of warranty.

There is, however one titanic inquiry that stands above all others. It was technically an email rather than a phone inquiry but I believe still encapsulates the genius we sometimes find ourselves dealing with. It arrived at 2.17am on a sunday morning and its author was obviously upset not to find me at my desk ready and willing to take his call.
Name: Bert
Email: [email protected]
Telephone: 999
Country: UK
Dealer: I Don''t know
Serial: Are you joking
Model: R50
Year of purchase: Heaven only knows* Problem: I have a pair of R50 stacks and need a pair of bass drivers.
Please tell me the cost inc. P&P and VAT.And please do not tell me that you will not supply spare parts; I am sick of seeing perfectly good equipment thrown on the scrap heap simply because the capitalist manufacturers refuse to supply spares knowing full well that this will force the person to buy all over again. Ever since that psycho thatcher got her clammy claws on power the psychopaths of capitalism have been finding ever more esoteric ways of trying to force us to part with a our cash. Even this contact is made as difficlt as possible. Why ask for the bloody serial number when you don''t put one on the gear to start with**. And there is no way that I am going to send my telephone
number across the internet. Once again the psychopaths of capitalism have no regard for others. I value both my security and my privacy but you want me passing sensitive personal data across what is effectively an open communications system; and worse, the sick psychopaths of State are monitoring everything now (or at least their capitalist cronies the internet service providers are).

Bert ********

*We think about 1975
**This product was old enough to predate our use of serial numbers

Length?- twenty years of hurt in his case it seems.
(Leonard Hatred briefly did some work on, Sun 6 Sep 2009, 13:02, 1 reply)

Not technically a call centre, but I used to work in a sales office with several desks and phones.
One day I was taking an order from a regular customer, and at the same time one of my colleagues was talking to one of his family about his dog, and the ladydog they'd left with him for the day, in the hope of making babydogs.

Although I was concentrating on my call, out of the corner of my ear (as it were) I could hear snippets of conversation. Apparently the breeding hadn't gone well and my colleague was getting more and more annoyed and perplexed. This was making me chuckle, until the conversation reached a crescendo and he shouted

"How can they be facing each other if their arses are stuck together?!"

I totally cracked up, if I'd not been on the phone it would have been one of those laugh-until-you-can't-breathe moments. Sadly though, I was on the phone, so I clamped my mouth shut and held my breath as my customer was reeling off his order number. I could just about manage to make "Mm" sounds so he knew I'd got the number, but then he asked me to repeat it back to him.

I tried desperately to do something but all I could do was sit silently quivering, with the voice in my ear repeating "Hello? ...hello? Are you there?" making it worse. Plus I was running out of breath. Finally I reached critical mass, and burst out in a huge guffaw - unfortunately just before I got to the hold button.

After a couple of minutes I gathered myself and picked the call back up and explained - luckily the guy was a good sport about it, laughed with me and didn't complain to my boss - result!


/not that long... but it seems a lot longer when you're holding your breath
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Sun 6 Sep 2009, 12:52, Reply)

Where the hell do i start ?
Bad, very bad half remembered drunken tales the likes of which no one will ever believe.
++All Names have been changed to protect the guilty++
I worked for a "British" software company in the guise of an outbound sales person, I did this for 18 months or so, 18 months of pressuring old women and senile old men to give up their pensions and hard earned cash in search of photo editing/desk top production nirvana (or so the marketing bumpf says) I had a few stories from this portion of the job (selling to people as they wait for an ambulance because they're having a heart attack, selling a £300 photo editing package to a blind man and a £200 voice recognition prog to a deaf guy via a touch type operator.) But this pales in comparison when I met Axel and moved to a different role in the company.

The place itself was one of the coke addled centres where the management were regularly seen and heard on a Tuesday afternoon at half 1 snorting prestigious amounts of Chang in the bogs, this was the norm really plus every other Friday(PAY DAY!!) they would take us to the pub and buy us a couple pints to say thanks for another 2 weeks of talking old people out of their cash. On a Saturday morning it was like going into an after club. People would wander in between 9am (the official start of the working day) and 11am making weak excuses sit down for 10 mins then run off to the bog to either
A. be sick
B. powder their nose
C. both

but after discovering our mutual love of Stella and being pissed and thus building a strong working relationship on these tenets we proceeded to get Battered every day without fail for 2 and a half years I barely have any recollection after about 3:30pm (half way through our dinner forty mins 2 pints in) but here are some of the highlights of this epic piss up called work (in no particular order)

-walking back from the pub past an off licence buying a bottle of vodka and some coke to "carry on the dinner hour" getting back to work falling off my chair and being unable to log back into my pc cos I had forgotten I was still logged in else where (took me an hour to remember and by that time I had 2 guys from systems crawling round the server room trying to figure it out)

-having Axel's mate deliver some "Gary Abblets" to work so we could go out straight after finishing but getting bored and taking them when I was supposed to be coaching a team in sales procedures and compliance. It went well I got a commendation from my boss for that one and the guys in the training group said they learned things they would have never thought about, No one suspected a thing.

-cheating on an incentive on a Saturday morning to get some free booze "to start the day" we were both pissed by 11 that day.

-Axel dancing on top of the smoking shed with his Ipod on singing along at the top of his lungs to night train by G'n'R, Bearing in mind it was a good 12 ft high he would have died had he fell off onto the concrete.

-"The Quad show" at some point during the latter half of my time at ***** one of the marketing directors (read overpaid under-worked prick) had a mid life crisis and got himself a "super charged"(lol) road quad bike with all the trimmings race leathers, super light racing helmet, all the penis replacement therapy shit he seemed to need, so every day at 5:30 he would leave cram his fat ass into his leathers (look out wok smugglers) and jump on his bike rev the engine as loud as it would go for 10 mins to "warm it up"(yeah right) as luck would have it this is the time me and Axel would be out front having a smoke to break up the tedium of a 2 hour afternoon shift and to top up essential fluids.
The engine now "warm" he proceeds to try and pull off really quickly and show us just how big his cock really is, he revs up as loud as his priapic device will go and........stalls it. Not to be embarrassed or anything he tries again (its not exactly quiet this machine so by now half the 300 people who work here are staring at him out the windows)stalls it again, And again, finally he gets going tears off down the industrial estate at about 70 mph just as a cop car pulls around the corner bout 30 yards down the road, he slams on, cop car lights come on, he gets a ticket in front of everybody in the contact centre and Axel and I are nearly comatose due to laughing so hard.
Mr Quad continues to perform the 1st few acts of his show minus the police every day for the last 6 months of my career at that place. That's when I quit, 4 years of my life and irreparable damage to my kidneys I got for my time there but I still have my stories and I now use them in an instructive way whenever I train new staff in my current job.



I never apologise for length its the thickness you need to worry about.
( nomorelifeanymore Tap Dances his way to freedom on, Sun 6 Sep 2009, 12:43, 1 reply)

The Joys of Cold Calling
Picture the scene, Mr603 is happily sat on his couch, scratching his knackers and watching Doctor Who.

*ring ring*

Psycorp603: "El Presidente Hotline?" (my phone looks like the big red phone you'd expect to see on a dictator's desk. I love it)
Call Centre Peon: "Hello, can I speak to Mr. E please?"
603: "No, he doesn't live here."
CCP: "It is important I speak to Mr. E!"
603: "Well, he doesn't live here. I live here, so I should know."
CCP: "You live there? I must speak to you!"
603: "No, you said you must speak to Mr. E."
CCP: "I must speak to you, this is very important."
603: "OK then. What about?
CCP: "This is an adwisory call..."
603: "Stop you there, don't need any advice."
CCP: "No sir, this is an adwisory call, I am not here to give you adwice!"
603: "Sounds like a pretty pointless advisory call then."
CCP: (angry now) "Sir, I don't know why you are being so unreasonable, this is an advisory call to help you because -"
*Hangs Up*
(Psycorp603, Sun 6 Sep 2009, 12:10, Reply)

So many amusing stories...
But I work in a government department and can't divulge them.

I'll just say that when I asked one young lady if she had done any work in the last six months she replied with: "Only as a prostitute."
(Phase3Profit pees too much, Sun 6 Sep 2009, 12:02, Reply)

Absolutely nothing to do with this QOTW
May I just say anyone who is whining like they just lost their hymen over spelling and punctuation winds me right up.

OK, if something isn't readable, simply pass it by. I just thought we were here to enjoy tales of misadventure and misanthropy, not do a fucking English exam.

Bite me.
(Galahad is out of his gourd on yellow bentines, Sun 6 Sep 2009, 10:49, 11 replies)

phonetic alphabet...
I recently had to move house and you know what that means: lots of call centre phoning!

So first stop was the bank account and everything was going swimmingly, until I reached the postcode.
Me: "Yes: 0-F-Y - that's zero, foxtrot, wankee - oh no - I mean wankee, no Yankee!!" I think the call centre lady fell off her seat.
Try it, it's actually quite tricky to say when you only have the letters in front of you.

Whats worse is the more I worried about it the more I said 'wankee' - to at least 3 more call centres. Argh, the shame.
(KeenBean objects to this comma, Sun 6 Sep 2009, 10:08, 2 replies)

Click...
After many tiring shifts spent remedying a certain Aussie internet providers clients woes, one would always gain such pleasure in the following (and regular) call:

"Tech support, can in start with your username?"

(female) "WHY ARE YOU PUTTING ALL THIS PORN ON MY COMPUTER!!!"

"Im sorry we provide and support your internet connection, and are not responsible for any content that may be now on your computer."

"WELL MY HUSBAND (and sometimes the kids are noted here too) DIDNT PUT THIS HERE..."

"Do you know where the History button is located on your browser?"

"NO. What is that?!?"

"Its the small icon of a clock witha green arrow at the top of your screen. Click it."

*Gasp

Click...
(flipoutninja sliced and diced on, Sun 6 Sep 2009, 9:57, Reply)

"I don't know anyone in the Seychelles"
"I've never even heard of it."

Ah, but you do know someone in the Seychelles sir. I believe you konw her as Slutty Mandy?
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Sun 6 Sep 2009, 7:35, Reply)

Utility companies
My mum recently moved house and struggled to get the electricity connected.
She'd called the utility company prior to the move and organised for it to be switched on a couple of days before she planned to move in - the switch box was located on the front verandah, so there'd be no issues with accessibility while she wasn't there.

Moving day, and she arrives to find that the electricity hadn't been connected. She calls the utility company again, gets a bit of a run around as to why it hadn't been connected already, and a promise that an electrician will be out between 6pm and midnight that night to connect it.

Midnight comes and with it a remarkable lack of electricians.

The next morning, she makes another call to the utility company to find out what the hell's going on. Eventually through to a real person, she tells them that the electrician didn't turn up the night before to switch on the power, and asks if they can tell her quickly when he will be out, as after a couple of calls and a lot of time on hold with the utility company, her mobile battery is almost dead.
"You should have charged your phone before you called."
The phone monkey places her on hold briefly to call the electrician to see why they didn't turn up the previous night and when he'll be able to come out.
"He did go out there last night, but the lights were off, so he assumed nobody was home".
(teff, Sun 6 Sep 2009, 4:46, 3 replies)

Yes.
In my department, we do billing research, aka "Why you owe x amount".
Often times, the calls are from people disputing overages or calls made from their phone. Most of the time, it's because they talk too damn much! But anyway, I had an issue come up where a customer was disputing international calls. So, I research a little before I call her.
I find that she has several calls made to Jamaica, which per the issue, she didn't make. I call her to let her know she can add an international calling pack to her account so she will not have these large charges again.
I call...and she picked up the phone.
I swear I am talking to Ms. Cleo! The woman is ONE HUNDRED PERCENT JAMAICAN, but is swearing up and down to me that she knows no one in Jamaica, never been there, etc.
Customers out there:
Please, for the love of humanty, don't LIE. We KNOW. *glares appropriately for a call center employee*
(NancyycnaN Wðñ'† ¥ðµ §hðw §ðmê ¢l姧?, Sun 6 Sep 2009, 3:59, Reply)

got loads of these stories.
there is some one who works in the indian office of where i work called twinkle twinkle. theres also a twinkle dolly.

madness!!
( Captain Pilchard The king of B-movies!, Sun 6 Sep 2009, 1:41, Reply)

Call centers are bad
The people who call them are worse.


CHEER THE FUCK UP.
( Captain Pilchard The king of B-movies!, Sun 6 Sep 2009, 1:36, 2 replies)

My laptop
I Wish I had rung the call centre about my laptop.


Instead I took it into PCworld.

The rest is history

Paul Gadd
(Pill Popper Thank you Sasha Shulgin, Sun 6 Sep 2009, 1:26, 1 reply)

As mentioned below my husband used to work for NTL
Some of his favourite are:

Mr Bin - Hello NTL technical support.
Punter - Hello, I'm not getting a picture on my TV.
Mr Bin - OK are there any lights on you NTL box?
Punter - No.
Mr Bin - Is it switched off at the wall?
Punter - No
Mr Bin - OK I'm going to need you to look at the back of the box is it possible for you to do that?
Punter - Well it'll be tricky, there's a power cut you see........ oh. Sorry. Bye.




So Mr Bin has gone through all the questions with an elderly lady and it seems that she will need an engineer out to sold the problem.

Mr Bin - I can get someone to come to you next Wednesday.
Lady - Oh next Wednesday is no good I'm afraid, there'll be no one here to answer the door.
Mr Bin - Oh I see. (assuming this lady has a career) when will someone be there?
Lady - Well anytime other than next week really. It's the butlers week off you see.
( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Sun 6 Sep 2009, 0:06, Reply)

Telemarketers
Not quite a call centre, but I assume they work in similar environments.

Anyway, my granny has an interesting method of dealing with them, and for the most part, it seems to work.

*Phone rings*
"Hello?"
"Hello, is that Mrs Grant?"
"Oh no... We buried her months ago.."
(Charlie-M, Sat 5 Sep 2009, 23:56, Reply)

Hubby used to work for NTL
they used to get a man phone up every day to complain about the hold music.
( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Sat 5 Sep 2009, 23:39, Reply)

Overseas call centres do not comply with the TPS
Which means every single day, I get the "Visa and Mastercard Customer Rewards Centre" (yep - 2 competing companies apparently want to send me to Florida for no good reason) calling from somewhere on the Indian subcontinent. It is frustrating, it is boring, the only responses left are -
1) Ooohhh that sounds interesting - can you just hold on a second? (and walk away until they hang up) or
2) Shame on you telling lies under the watch of your gods (with this particular outfit, you can pretty safely invoke the Hindu gods) and get into the theology of cheating and lying with the caller.

I have no beef with those working in UK call centres, you don't hassle me, you help me out when I call you, we can be friends.
( 0nyx, Sat 5 Sep 2009, 21:54, Reply)