I have a credit card with two companies. One is Discover. The other is not.
With the non-Discover card, the help line goes to India or somewhere thereabouts where I encounter people named Sunam that speak with as good a British accent as they can muster. It usually takes a while to be put through and then it takes a while for us to understand each other’s accent, as I and the other person both usually speak with heavily regional accents peculiar to our particular countries and regions.
Today for the first time I had to call the Discover number. I was directed to a woman named Shelly in a call center in Utah. My question was resolved in under a minute and we had no trouble understanding each other.
The answer is of course to cancel your non-Discover Credit Card.
I have to deal with helpdesks as part of my job, some in India, others elsewhere round Europe and Ireland. I often have difficulty understanding accents, they have difficulty with mine, and we end up using email.
I know right where that call center is! … It may depend on the time of day you call. The husband of a friend of mine works in a Unysis call center. At 4:30 p.m. every day they turn their calls over to India and head for home.
I knew there had to be some reason I liked Discover besides the cash back (which is changing soon so you need to earn at least $50 instead of $20 to redeem).
The trouble with cancelling the other one is that not everyplace takes Discover, so it’s handy to keep a Mastercard or Visa besides.
Maybe you’ve struggled with Carlos’ Ute because he speaks it with a Navajo accent. As you know, Navajo speakers were used during World War II to deliver messages that could not be deciphered except by other speakers of Navajo. I like Carlos Nikai’s work, as well. It is amazing what he has accomplished playing only a cedar flute with a pentatonic scale.
I don’t like that jobs are going out of the country but I don’t mind talking to people from India through call centers. Maybe it’s because there are a lot of health care professionals and other professionals from India and other foreign countries serving the people of West Virginia. I’ve gotten used to the accent. I understand people from India a whole lot better than I do those British shows on public TV. Can they talk with any more marbles in their mouths?
I canceled my Discover card several years ago. I’d gotten a new card and had to call to activate it. I called and listened to various pitches for things like identity-theft insurance, loss-of-job insurance, etc. After about five minutes I stopped the person and asked if I could activate my card without listening to all the crap and was told no. So I said don’t bother. I’ve never had that happen with another card.
I also like Carlos Nakai, and would add that the native-American flute is a difficult beast to tame, even with its simple scale.
Before the major off-shoring initiative of the past decade or so we had several credit card companies with major call centers in utah, including my (former) employer.
I’m surprised (pleasantly so) to see that they haven’t slashed their workforce in favor of an off-shoring option.
