Apple moves all tech support calls to India!

[plexiglass]

This totally sucks. Dell moves tech support back because of customer complaints, and APPLE MOVES TO INDIA! I called apple care today, and it sounded like I was speaking with some one VERY far away (poor connection quality). Then I became annoyed when I was asked 5 TIMES TO REPEAT MY SERIAL NUMBER. I spoke slowly, clearly, and was not rude at any point. But I was unable to get any real help. I hung up and called back, this time I asked where i was calling... INDIA. I called cutomer complants at Apple HQ to complain. The woman told me I was racist for complaining about poor tech support from India and that I could be sued (huh?) for making such a racist statement! What is going on over at apple?

 

[Project]

Offshoring is the norm these days. Its a shame really, because jobs are being lost for profit, but most importantly, customer service whatever way you look at it suffers. It isnt their fault - they get offered a job with good pay so of course they will take it, so I dont like people who get at the Indians etc... its solely down to the individual companies.

 

[PlaceofDis]

so based off of your one call you are saying that all tech support has been moved to India? that is quite an assumption to be making without any real info. As far as i know, apple has tech support centers all around the world, usually you are patched in to one closer to you or in your country, but you could probably be put through to any of 'em

 

[superbovine]

This totally sucks. Dell moves tech support back because of customer complaints, and APPLE MOVES TO INDIA! I called apple care today, and it sounded like I was speaking with some one VERY far away (poor connection quality). Then I became annoyed when I was asked 5 TIMES TO REPEAT MY SERIAL NUMBER. I spoke slowly, clearly, and was not rude at any point. But I was unable to get any real help. I hung up and called back, this time I asked where i was calling... INDIA. I called cutomer complants at Apple HQ to complain. The woman told me I was racist for complaining about poor tech support from India and that I could be sued (huh?) for making such a racist statement! What is going on over at apple?

i think dell only moved enterprise and small business to the US which is in Austin and Oklahoma City. the rest i believe is still in india.

working in a call center you get a ton of calls like your that people say they aren't getting real help. usually the problem is that the customer can't explain what is going with the tech and the tech isn't expierenced enough to extract the information out.

it cost around $40 a day to pay a college educated person to man a phone in india. for level 1 tech support it cost US at least between oklahoma and texas is around $14-$17/hr considering they have some computer skills and/or A+ certification. oklahoma is best place in the country because of telecom infostructure there, and it is the cheapest long distance. this is also why alot of telemarketing firms are in oklahoma. anyway, it around cost around $120 to pay for the same level of support in the US not counting benefits. do the math.

also from you statement it seems to imply that you don't like the techsupport because it is in India which is racist. the better way to put to them is that "you understand that they are well trained and probably good what they do, but your particular techsupport agents english skills provided a barrier that you believe should be held to a higher standard at apple". you way sounds like you don't like people from India. the reality is they are cheap and it is outsourced. so apple can only complain to the people the contracted with which means it doesn't really matter. that is why outsourced techsupport in the US or India always sucks.

 

[.Andy]

Welcome to free-trade. 10 to 1 if they asked you to pay $2 extra to speak to someone in the US everytime you rang you'd wouldn't pay. You want cheap products with the one hand.....

Cue some more xenophobic "they're taking our jobs" rhetoric...

 

[plexiglass]

crappyphobia not xenophobia

We already pay a premium for Apple Care... What happened to the care part? My problem with offshore tech support has nothing to do with Jobs here in the US, it's an issue of quality of service. When you are dealing some one in india reading from a cue sheet, or from the apple knowledge base word for word it's frustrating. If you are not familiar with the torture of crappy tech support from India just look up some reviews of SONY's VAIO support. It sucks! I expect more from Apple, as I have been dealing with them for years and have always had great customer service.

 

[frankpledge]

mine went to india too

i had a minor problem with my tiger install and called support and spoke with either india or an indian gentleman.

here's the thing, it's not racist to say that you cannot understand someone when you are calling for support in the united states for a product that you bought in the united states and is from the united states. if it were an indian product and originated fom india then it would be my problem to work out.

additionally, i paid $350 (apple care & pro care upgrade) for support. 350 dollars of united states currency. I'm sure that the indian support team is as proficient as the U.S. team, but i can NOT undertand what they are saying when it comes to even minor tech talk. if they could speak clearly to me i would not care WHERE the support came from.

i simply said that i need to speak with someone i could understand and was transfered to a 'native' english speaker (indian or not i don't know and i don't care) and we solved the problem in 10 minutes.

global economy? whatever. if i can't understand, what's the point?

 

[Bern]

Welcome to free-trade. 10 to 1 if they asked you to pay $2 extra to speak to someone in the US everytime you rang you'd wouldn't pay. You want cheap products with the one hand.....

Cue some more xenophobic "they're taking our jobs" rhetoric...

Give me a break

I'm so over these trendy Sydney people who seem to think that if you don't like something about any other country then that makes you an immediate candidate for xenophobia. That's why we have an ex Aussie soldier (with the last name Stewart no less) threatening our nation with acts of terrorism as an Al Qeada member. But we turn a bind eye and just say it's their rights to do so, like all the unskilled immigrants to our shores who leach our welfare system "it's their basic human rights to do so"

The simple fact is people from India are willing to work for a lot less than most of us are. They don't get all the penalty rates and employment advantages we do either so India can under cut our market in the IT stakes.

Yes they may be taking jobs, but I hardly think it xenophobic to make this statement either, it's just fact.

 

[superbovine]

We already pay a premium for Apple Care... What happened to the care part? My problem with offshore tech support has nothing to do with Jobs here in the US, it's an issue of quality of service. When you are dealing some one in india reading from a cue sheet, or from the apple knowledge base word for word it's frustrating. If you are not familiar with the torture of crappy tech support from India just look up some reviews of SONY's VAIO support. It sucks! I expect more from Apple, as I have been dealing with them for years and have always had great customer service.

i got news for you most places have their techs reading from a cue sheet at some point unless they have a lot of expierence and don't need it. that isn't just from india.

 

[danny_w]

i got news for you most places have their techs reading from a cue sheet at some point unless they have a lot of expierence and don't need it. that isn't just from india.

At least if I could understand their English when they read from a cue sheet, and they could understand me when I try to give my serial number, that would be a big help. Personally I would be more than glad to pay the extra $2 per call that somebody above mentioned, if I could get somebody that could understand my language. I tried to call AT&T customer service several years ago and had a very frustrating experience trying to move my service to a different apartment in the same building (how simple is that?). And that isn't even technical. When you try adding all of the technical jargon into the conversation, understanding the same language and accent becomes even more important. I dropped AT&T and will never go back.

 

[ReanimationLP]

Reminds me of this toon :

www.illwillpress.com/tech.html

 

[MacNoobie]

I must admit the whole outsourcing thing is worthless at best, sure companies can save TONS of money by outsourcing to India but there’s the whole issue about quality of service. If I'm unable to communicate effectively with the person on the other end of the phone then that in turn takes up much more time to resolve the problem and if we have a total communication break down by which he/she doesn’t understand me and I don’t understand him/her then obviously its a waste of both our times. I've heard my friend talking to someone at net gear for his router to give you an idea at 1am where we were at and the lady answering the phone you could not understand what she was saying and he ended up calling back two more times before we got someone that actually spoke a decent amount of English to help him.

That to me is wasted time and what if one day he decide to charge for his time in dealing with tech support, calling back till I got someone I can communicate with or someone that’s able to fix my problem right away so that his business could go back to doing business?

What if we setup either publicly or government funded camps where in order to possess a PC of any sort you'd need to be able to pass the basics of owning a computer and at least a bit of trouble shooting just to get people so they don’t depend on so many tech support calls, wasted time on the phone etc?

 

[rendezvouscp]

also from you statement it seems to imply that you don't like the techsupport because it is in India which is racist. the better way to put to them is that "you understand that they are well trained and probably good what they do, but your particular techsupport agents english skills provided a barrier that you believe should be held to a higher standard at apple". you way sounds like you don't like people from India. the reality is they are cheap and it is outsourced. so apple can only complain to the people the contracted with which means it doesn't really matter. that is why outsourced techsupport in the US or India always sucks.

His original comment was not racist, he just said that he was having a hard time communicating to the person because the quality of the call was poor. I'm sure if I was in India and they outsourced the calls to China, I might complain about the quality too.

The comments about accents and etc. aren't particularly racist either. Can people from other countries always understand what I'm saying? No, not because they're racist, it's because we have different accents and they aren't used to mine and I'm not communicating clearly enough.

As for the support, that explains a few things. I was calling last week and I didn't even get through; after they asked me what product I was using and were patching me through, the phone would hang up. I wonder if that's when they made the switch...
-Chase

 

[t300]

The woman told me I was racist for complaining about poor tech support from India and that I could be sued (huh?) for making such a racist statement! What is going on over at apple?

I can believe it all, until you get to that point. You could not be sued for making "racist" comment. Who were you even talking to at Apple?


On the topic though, what I find more amusing is that they give the people totally American names for them to use. Am I saying that Indian people can't have these names? NO. I am saying that it's amusing when I get a man or woman with the strongest accent I've ever heard exclaiming to me that their name is Dave or Judy.

 

[crachoar]

Bahaha - sweet Jesus - that cartoon brings back so many bad memories.

Indian tech support is so worthless. I've had to talk to those guys to have PC parts replaced after they catch on fire and whatnot. They always ask you the 'common mistake' questions, even though you tell them first hand that you know what the problem is.

'Yeah, my video card fan stopped working and the card literally caught on fire. It's toast. I replaced it with a spare I had, and everything works. I need to exchange this part.'

'Is your monitor turned on?'

I've had those guys ask me everything except for the 'do you like the ice cream' question.

Thanks for the link.

Oh - and didn't you hear? Everything makes you a racist these days!

 

[rendezvouscp]

Bahaha - sweet Jesus - that cartoon brings back so many bad memories.

Indian tech support is so worthless. I've had to talk to those guys to have PC parts replaced after they catch on fire and whatnot. They always ask you the 'common mistake' questions, even though you tell them first hand that you know what the problem is.

'Yeah, my video card fan stopped working and the card literally caught on fire. It's toast. I replaced it with a spare I had, and everything works. I need to exchange this part.'

'Is your monitor turned on?'

I've had those guys ask me everything except for the 'do you like the ice cream' question.

Thanks for the link.

Oh - and didn't you hear? Everything makes you a racist these days!

I haven't finished high school, so I haven't taken my year of racism 1-2 yet (as required by the California school system)...

That's the sort of thing that really bugs me. I'm all for anyone helping me out with a support problem—I don't care if they're Indian, Native American, Black, White, Eskimo... (I could keep going) but I want real support. I'm sure that these people have some training, but are they certified Apple technicians? Probably not (but I don't know if all the support staff in the US were certified either). I'm not saying that the move to India was a mistake; I'm saying that the current staff is a mistake.
-Chase

 

[mikeyredk]

Whenever i get my phone support sent to india i hit on the females. Maybe because i am indian

 

[bousozoku]

Considering that two months ago people were complaining about the poor customer service from AppleCare with native English speakers, what's the point?

As long as it's easy to understand people, it shouldn't matter where the support staff is.

A few months ago, after BellSouth "moved" its DSL tech. support, I happened to call and talked to "Ryan" after being disconnected by some other person whose name I couldn't understand at all. We went through the script...again...and got to the point where he told me that the solution was to wait. I told him to please go across the street and tell the people to re-boot the DNS machine. Of course, guessing that he was in Bangalore, it might have been a very, very wide street.

 

[superbovine]

His original comment was not racist, he just said that he was having a hard time communicating to the person because the quality of the call was poor. I'm sure if I was in India and they outsourced the calls to China, I might complain about the quality too.

The comments about accents and etc. aren't particularly racist either. Can people from other countries always understand what I'm saying? No, not because they're racist, it's because we have different accents and they aren't used to mine and I'm not communicating clearly enough.

s/he big hangup was the fact they were from India, not their accent. S/he also said they had a problem with their comprehension of english, not their accents. s/he seem to garner from her/his conversation they were from India when s/he asked which means s/he understood them.

this is in general. a lot people talk down about the India, a former British Coloney. Not a lot of people know this but there was 25 division of Japanese soliders in asia during WWII. Indian and British, American, Chinese and many others keep the japanese soliders at bay in the Asia while the US Navy and Marines islanded hopped. in other worlds if they didn't pitch in a lot of those men would have been in the pacific. you should give them a little more respect than what you do, because they up lives and probably saved a lot american men fighting in the pacific.

 

[Project]

^ While you are slightly sidetracking, you are right in that we should be blaming them. As I said before, its a job to them and probably a well paid one considering the economic climate in India right now. The issue here is squarely with the directors of eaCH company who outsource.

A lack of technical knowledge is not the answer either. Put simply, while they may speak English, we have completelty different cultures...

For instance, as a student I earn money by workiung part time in a call centre for a credit card company. While one customer is on the phone enquiring as to why a transaction was turned down in a aparticular store, I told her the item she wanted could be obtained cheaper at this other store just down the block...because im local - I know whats going on in this country... its contexts, whats happening etc. That adds a tremendous element of customer service... and is the complete opposite to somebody just running through a script.

Or the time when it was in the news here that one Directory enquiries firm offshored to China, and one of their employees took a call from a customer asking for the telephone number of the Manchester United ticket store...

Employees response: "certainly, what town is that in?"

I couldnt believe it.

 

[asif786]

personally, i don't particularly like it when my calls are routed to non-english speaking countries (india, china, wherever). the european ones aren't so bad..

half of the time, they don't seem to understand what you're saying or they just choose to ignore it. i.e.

Me: 'Hi. My computer is busted. It's the fan. How long will it take'
Them: Hi, Sir. We need to book it in for repair.'
Me: 'I just want to know how long it will take'
Them: 'Have you tried restarting?'
Me: WTF?!?

If they could understand what I'm saying and not be so ignorant, i'd be happy. The accents is a bit of an issue, but that's always the case. When I was in Canada, I had a few problems because I speak incredibly fast and with a strong british accent..it means i have to speak slower, because otherwise people are like 'pardon me?'. It's the same with Canadians and me..sometimes they skip out letters and i'm like 'huh?'

That's just an example (and i'm not saying all canadians or indians speak odd at all). Accents aren't too big of a problem (except with serial numbers..that does my ****ing head in) but nowadays i find that I have to be kinda firm and maybe a bit rude to get my point accross..

edit: sorry..this post is so badly formed..it's terrible. but hey, it's early..

 

[Rod Rod]

here's the thing, it's not racist to say that you cannot understand someone when you are calling for support in the united states for a product that you bought in the united states and is from the united states. if it were an indian product and originated fom india then it would be my problem to work out.

It's an American product made in China and/or Taiwan . . . so maybe tech support should be moved further East? j/k . . . I agree with you about intelligibility though.

On the topic though, what I find more amusing is that they give the people totally American names for them to use. Am I saying that Indian people can't have these names? NO. I am saying that it's amusing when I get a man or woman with the strongest accent I've ever heard exclaiming to me that their name is Dave or Judy.

In some parts of India there are Christian communities which give their children such names. Most of those folks would have thick accents as their first language may be Telugu or Malayalam. But of course it's also common practice to have call-center pseudonyms.

Whenever i get my phone support sent to india i hit on the females. Maybe because i am indian

You're not the only one who tries that. I guess if you speak Hindi or a regional language that might help . . . or does it?

 

[.Andy]

Give me a break

I'm so over these trendy Sydney people who seem to think that if you don't like something about any other country then that makes you an immediate candidate for xenophobia. That's why we have an ex Aussie soldier (with the last name Stewart no less) threatening our nation with acts of terrorism as an Al Qeada member. But we turn a bind eye and just say it's their rights to do so, like all the unskilled immigrants to our shores who leach our welfare system "it's their basic human rights to do so"

The simple fact is people from India are willing to work for a lot less than most of us are. They don't get all the penalty rates and employment advantages we do either so India can under cut our market in the IT stakes.

Yes they may be taking jobs, but I hardly think it xenophobic to make this statement either, it's just fact.

Woah woah waoh down there Ben! Boy did I hit a nerve ! Al Qeada ROFL!

In this world if you want to embrace cheap products (the computer you are using right now is made in China) you have to take the good with the bad. Where's the thread of outrage when the cost of computers drops a few hundred bucks because they're made in China?

Far more jobs have been lost through off-shoring of manufacturing than will every be lost through tech support. But because people don't have to deal directly with the manufacturers it doesn't seem to matter. But woah-behold if you have to talk to someone in India.

I just find it hypocritical that's all. Sorry to get your hackles up that wasn't my intention .

 

[aswitcher]

I am not too happy with this move either.

My experience with ISPs Indian tech support over the years has been one of frustration. Thick accents have made for support that takes at least twice as long as it should. I am already frustrated enough with tech issues at the time, so accents and what appears to be limited training makes for poor care. Heres hoping Apple dont take too long before they realise their mistake.

 

[superbovine]

^ While you are slightly sidetracking, you are right in that we should be blaming them. As I said before, its a job to them and probably a well paid one considering the economic climate in India right now. The issue here is squarely with the directors of eaCH company who outsource.

i agree is it the company who outsourced is at fault no the people in the India. However, apple is a public traded company with a fiduary duty to it stock holders to make the most profit. the numbers show that is cheaper to outsource to india. you could make the argument the quality of service is lower, but i bet the data will show the number of complaints is about the same between them. people will also find something to complain about to tech support. this isn't anything new. once, i had a lady call my manager to complain i couldn't fix her modem. the problem was she didn't want to reach behide her file cabinet and plug in her telephone cord into the wall socket. she expected to magically make her modem work without it being connected to the telephone. that is just one example. so bitching about someone's accent which is fixable is better taken than someone bitching about how they couldn't get their computer fixed because the tech didn't know what to do.