Auto-Rickshaw To You Coming Now Soon…
Driving home a few nights ago I threw a belt. Not just any old belt, but THE main serpentine belt that shares the rotation of the engine crankshaft with all the little gadgets we take for granted - alternator to supply the spark to the plugs and keep the battery charged and run the radio and lights, air conditioner without which we would all have died this summer, power steering and various pumps and other techno-gadgets that make our lives so comfy and safe while we line the Arabs pockets with $3.00/gallon petrol.
Due to a fortuitous alignment of the stars and planets, I made it home safely. But being evening, there was nothing to do but leave it in position to be towed the following morning. It (I do not name my vehicles like some do) was due for a 60,000 mile checkup anyway, so I tried to channel my wrath and rationalize this as a good thing. Did not totally succeed…
Come morning I called the local shop that was to house my wagon for a couple of days. I agreed with their advice to not try driving it to them but to have it towed. Therein lies the real crux of this story…
According to the card, I have anted up each year since 1980 for membership in the BP Motor Club, previously the Amoco Motor Club, and theoretically competitive with AAA. Over the years that is a lot of hard earned cash laid out for peace-of-mind, roadside assistance, etc. I had one occasion to use their services several years ago, and there may have been one other instance way back in the beginning, before the earth cooled. Otherwise, for about 26 years, I have been a cash cow to them.
The phone call, the wading through layers of unintelligible voice menus, getting lost and repeating the whole ordeal, waiting … waiting … finally connecting with … someone. Since I never understood anything he said, including his name, I’ll just refer to him as Raji. Roomie has an ear better tuned to sing-song accents, so I handed her the phone. She too could barely understand him, even after asking him to repeat things several times. Before hanging up, he confirmed he was in India. WTF…!? I’m in Tennessee calling for roadside assistance from some local towing service affiliated with BP Motor Club, and I’m talking to Raji in downtown India, who has no frigging idea where Tennessee is. I don’t think he could understand us either. He washed his hands of the entire case because we could not answer one simple question to the satisfaction of the screen choices in front of him.
The question as best we could make it out, was “Is vehicle front-wheel drive or rear-wheel drive?” Since I have a Subaru Outback, the honest answer was ”All-wheel drive.” Following one of several interminable delays while he checked for information about that, he came back on and proudly announced that their providers cannot provide service for that. Raji wished us a nice day and hung up, but not before he admitted he was in India. I had expected Raji to announce that the auto-rickshaw had been dispatched and would arrive shortly.
Guess what memebership is being cancelled even as I write this…
It is bad enough when our calls for technical support for computers and software are routed to India or other foreign countries where they do not speak our language and we do not speak theirs. All those operatives care about, indeed all their employers care about, is working their way phonetically through the appropriate decision tree to arrive at the end of the page. That is phonetically with no real understanding of the problem or the solution. Nor any caring. But it is far worse when our call is not related to why our new printer won’t print, but an urgent call for local service of a personal nature. “Herro. Is 9-1-1. You have probrem, prease?”
When our government and big corporations ship our personal, health, investment, and income records over there and have these non-understanding, non-caring, unskilled and who-knows-if-trustworthy, far below minimum wage workers telling us how to fill out tax forms or explaining the limits of health coverage, our system is in full FUBAR mode. (To the uninitiated, that is Fucked Up Beyond All Repair.) Our country that was so strong, something for the world to admire and emulate, has quickly becoming an empty shell, a mockery of what was and what could be. Thank you, George W. Bush…
16 Comments so far
bless you my child…verily ye speak the truth…i got so pissed one time talking (or trying to) some schmuck with a accent so thick I thought he was faking it..I actually screamed into the phone…if i am forced to speak to a fucking indian..i want to speak with one that wears a feather..not a dot…get me tonto…in many dealings on the phone i have spoke to people in countries like India, Philipines, Australia, Tiwan,and another country I could never figure out from the accent…huh..and they think Texans talk funny…
george w bush(aka forest gump) deserves to have to have operators from India in the white house…
Make sure they check the bearings of - and straightness of - any shafts driven by said belt.
‘Cos if said belt failed because it was too tight then it may have bent the shafts, pulled bearings off-centre etc.
Changing the belts are expensive nowadays, because of inaccessibility. So while they’re poking around in there, get them to inspect the toothed belt driving the camshaft (if you have such a belt). Because if that goes too, valves kiss pistons and it is VERY expensive.
Been there. Done that.
Amen, brother! Whoever thought that customer service could be outsourced to India? While very competent, they have no social/cultural touchstones to help translate a problem in Tennessee/Georgia/California/New Hampshire with whatever life experiences they’ve had in Mumbai. Argh!
The funniest was when I was trying to reach Delta before my move to NY to find out the rules/regs of flying dog Bailey to NY. So, I get this lady from India who couldn’t understand why I’d want to fly a dog to NY. Not a clue. Finally, I tracked down the local Atlanta number for Delta (which I keep handy, BTW) and got a real live Southern lady who understood perfectly well why I’d want to move my dog to NY with me.
Don’t even get me started with American Express’ Indian customer service line.
I saw a television program on this type of outsourcing recently. Because English is taught in all the schools as a second language, the jobs have created a large middle class in India. One of the telephone operators spoke about what they do while being cursed by Americans. (They mute the phone and curse back in Farsi or whatever)
The next country at the top of the list for similar operations will be South Africa where English is also spoken.
I thought your blog was funny, astute and spoke to common experiences of most of us. I just don’t understand the last paragraph of rant. The big corporations began this outsourcing a long time before GW Bush came to office, and we can hardly blame him for the entire demise of our country/culture. And isn’t BP a British corporation?
Winston, I’m sitting here with my mouth open; but I wish I could say it was for the first time. Hardly! It’s just that every time I hear of such a HORROR story I kind of get sick to my stomach that these things actually keep happening. I don’t know what I expect…some miracle to occur that will make it all STOP! But NO…one right after another…they just keep coming.
None of it makes any sense to me. Your story is so typical. It’s perfectly okay to take your money in membership, but come the day when you actually may need their help…WHOA, now that’s another story. What the #@!*%$@!@#@%!!##@!#$%$@#!@# is wrong with this country? Why in the $#%&$#@ are we going to India for anything like this? And, it’s for EVERYTHINGS! What don’t we get Winston?
Bonnie, the outsourcing of jobs overseas did start prior to Bush’s appointment to the presidency, but greatly accelerated with encouragement of his administration, which is married to big business. Or maybe they are just one and the same. So far as I have been able to determine, government at any level did not send jobs offshore until Bush came along.
Yes, I can and do blame Bush for all of our ills. -(big grin)- I despise the man (not the office) so much that I’m even sure he is in some way responsible for my lower back pain and the drought that has killed my lawn.
As to BP being a British corp … when we’re talking about the top 100 or so corporate entities on the planet, there is no such thing as being British or American or French - no, scratch that last one - or Japanese. These mega-corps are worldwide in scope and the fact that they started in or have roots in a given country means little. Especially when we have the US government embracing them so eagerly. Think Dubai…
Maybe Frank Paynter or some other astute blogger will come along and help me out on this by explaining better than I can.
Oh I know this one. I adopted a strategy over the past few years, tired of getting phone calls from people who’s fluency in English was always tested if I made a joke.
First, usually they introduce themselves by saying, I’m Sandra etc, then I stop them in mid-flow (the usual spiel about how they are not selling me anything and can offer me things I don’t want for nothing - yeah.) Then I ask them where they are calling from. Usually they give me the name of the company. No I say, which country are you calling from? Sometimes they’d tell me and sometimes they don’t. Anyway I continue saying, Sandra, if you would be so kind, please inform your company that I will not purchase from companies who don’t provide employment in the country where they source revenue, and customers. I’m not interested, thank you for calling.
After a long time, and many of these phone-calls, they ceased. I read somewhere recently that some companies are re-siting call centers back in the UK. I imagine many people like myself took the same attitude.
Recently, I needed the phone number of my local police-station. I dialled one of the many directory enquiry companies. The female operator asked why I didn’t dial 999- the emergency number. I explained (at 50p a minute that it was not that urgent) She asked which area I was in, I gave this information. And she gave me the number for Scotland Yard (London Metropolitain Police Headquarters). Didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Asked her where her call center was sited. She replied, Manila, Phillippnes!! I thanked her, and then dialled the Scotland Yard number, explained what I had just experienced to an astonished phone operator, who gave me the number of our local police station. Globalisation? Maddness.
Biggest problem is that speaking a language and actually being fluent in it with an understanding of the cultural nuances are too different things. For instance in a recent episode of Our New Life in Everwood, a very important exchange between two main characters was ruined because I didn’t understand a word. I had to call a US friend to find out what “wingman” meant. And I speak English.
The only consolation I can offer is, as my Mother used to say, “Nothing lasts forever”. The only question is what will it be replaced with?
Damn. That’s a challenge, Winston. I feel for you mightily, agree with most of what you say, and yet, and yet… pulling this apart and putting it back together in a way that validates your reaction isn’t easy for me.
First, BP Motor Club is a shell, contracting services from local towing companies and contracting dispatch servcies from offshore. Their business model seems to be heavy on the contract and light on the service. They use least cost suppliers and it shows.
Either BP sucks because they can’t provide what you pay for, or Raji and his contracted service company suck because they can’t match you to the service that BP provides.
In order to dispatch a tow truck, you need to knwo what kind of equipment to send, and Raji was trying to determine that.
It seems that best advice for towing AWD vehicles is put them on a flatbed, and truck them where you need to go. If it’s a front or rear wheel drive, hook it up to the tow rig with the drive wheels off the ground and tow it in neutral. I have a feeling that Raji was facing a situation where the service providers he dispatches, the ones BP contracts with, aren’t equipped for short-haul flat-bed towing.
If BP has a tow contractor in your area with a flatbed, then Raji is lucky he is working 10,000 miles away because you would be justified in showing up at his front door and discussing it with him; but, I suspect BP uses Joe’s Live Bait and Short Haul Towage, a company without the equipment to handle your vehicle properly and Raji did you a proper, because you would not want Joe hooking up to your vehicle with that 1947 Ford with the welded tow boom and the rusty-not-too-trusty cable spinning off the WW2 Navy surplus winch he uses.
But I suspect it’s not the tow truck tech that’s troubling you Winston, but the powerless you feel dealing with people who are not native speakers of English and based half way round the world. We all have our bad experiences with this model, but the worst one I can relate was trying to get my Craftsman lawn mower repaired at the local Sears Service Center. Their service model required me to call an 800 number and speak to someone somewhere else in the USA about my order status, when I knew that the damn thing was either ready for pick-up or not at a shop just across town. Their computers were down, so they couldn’t tell me if it was ready, and had I been able to talk with someone onsite, they would have been able to tell me and I was frustrated.
Poor service is poor service regardless of where the call center is located. Offshore call centers make economic sense because they provide a least cost service. Offshore call centers are one reason we wrapped the planet in fiber-optic cable. I’m good with a competent call center person providing me service no matter where he or she is located, but if her name is Laxmi, I wish she wouldn’t call herself Betty.
Michael Powell blogged a couple of years ago that, “Traditionally, the economic justification for government regulation of an industry was market failure such as monopoly, negative externalities, or unmet social goals. Government’s role in the marketplace should be limited because markets and entrepreneurs develop innovative solutions far more efficiently than regulators can. This is the principle behind opening the communications sector to competition. I am particularly mindful of this principle as new competitive services—VoIP, for example—become viable alternatives for customers.”
I think we are faced with negative externalities now in terms of offshore service provisioning and it is time for some government regulation. I just don’t want any friends of W., friends of corporate global domination, writing the statutes.
Our friend NAFTA Bill Clinton http://tinyurl.com/pkkjn did as much as anyone to set the climate for the flight of jobs offshore, but like we learned in Econ 101, the comparative advantage that one place has producing widgets will be offset by the comparative advantage another place has preparing kumquats for the table, and ultimately in a complex economy you want to reduce artificial restraints and the rising tide of prosperity will bring benefits to all. It worked in the Clinton era partly I think because the corporations knew that their most egregious bullshit would be stomped by the Democratic Party. Now that the Democrats have been neutralized and/or co-opted for so long, the corporate powers have implemented restraints of trade to their own advantage and the whole world suffers (give or take a few folks like Raji who have better jobs).
So to improve service, to improve the climate of opportunity, we have to identify reasonable public service regulation and implement it. Tall order, and it won’t be on the agenda of folks who believe the second coming is right around the corner so none of it really matters anyway.
That’s about all I have to say except that I don’t like hearing people talking disparagingly about other people who come from poorer places. That kind of competition, like the competition between whites and blacks in our cities, keeps our eyes off the big target we should be aiming at, which is economic equality for all (and yes that includes tearing that upper class of the super-rich down to size either by taxing them into equality or imprisoning their sorry asses and confiscating their ill gotten gains).
Oops, I didn’t mean to start a rant here….
Thank you for calling in the big gun: FP. I know we are a global economy, but I am not sure anyone really understands what that means. Frank may, but I sure don’t. I know it means that if someone sees an opportunity to take advantage of a situation and make money by doing so, they will. That began a very long time ago.
Now you know why Gwendolyn got a belt job ($130.29) during her spa days. (Incidentally, I don’t technically name these cars: I drive them, and eventually the name is revealed.)
I’ve been with Triple A for thirteen years. Their phone calls, at least around here, go to Tulsa.
Thanks to all of you! Great mix of comments…
And, Frank, you’re welcome to rant here anytime you wish. Does not even have to be on subject or on key.
Couple of points… Yes it was a flatbed. All the towing services around here have them, and yes, Raji was just doing his job. But there was a gross failure of the system, the model, in this case, as there so often is. Blame belongs not with Raji but with the designers of the model, the managers of the system, and ultimately with the corporate entity that decided to offshore outsource the response “service” without providing a well designed program that allows for “none of the above” answers and without properly educating the agents and operatives they hire and put on the phones. …Damn, that is a sentence and a half…
And it is not just the language problem, it is the cultural gulf that exists. Most people in non-English speaking countries do not understand our humor, our culture specific needs, the nuances of daily life as we know it. We can agree it is not their fault, but that does not alleviate the gross inability to communicate with each other. See MaryB and aine livia’s comments above.
Lastly, I’m not sure what you were referring to in the last paragraph, or maybe it was just a general comment. I agree there is no room or need for disparaging remarks aimed at those that are in some way less fortunate than us, and I hope I have never done that. “…economic equality for all…” is a very tough nut. I am not sure of your intent or the purpose of that in this discussion. But on that topic, I firmly believe that the rewards should go to those who work hard and earn them - fairly, honestly, and without stepping on his/her brothers and sisters to get there. Those who by their own choice do not work do not deserve any of my pie. Those who by physical or mental incapacity cannot work, I will (and do) share my pie with. I never begrudge those with more than I have… unless they got it unfairly, dishonestly, by stepping on others…
boy you hit a hot button with your readers on this one and I think the problems with that were well discussed by you and your readers but to add to the mix– try this for a new way to frustrate and destroy the morale of the American people. They evidently want to outsource the IRS collection jobs to some agency to collect tax money that the gov’t claims is owed. What is to stop that from being in India? What makes the person who is virutally a bounty hunter care about finding truth regarding moneys owed. What we as Americans are willing to tolerate is amazing.
I think we should outsource it to good local company like Blackwater.
There’s another aspect of outsourcing telemarketers that has taken a paradoxical twist downunder. Amex are notorious for it. British backpackers or travellers are being employed in second world countries to enquire if I’m interested in buying insurance, a new phone service or some other type of tertiary industry.
It tops up their beer money and annoys me at least once a week.
I find the automated robots the most annoying when the systems aren’t working properly, talking to a real person in India comes as a relief sometimes
http://static.flickr.com/59/197918990_4c6b068a6a.jpg?v=0
BP Motor Club Tennessee tow truck?
Nope. They don’t have one. But now that I look at it closely, it may be the one they had back in the early 80s.