I am surprised at people when they call up here. So what if you have a broken TV the world is not going to end. Oh, you can't watch the upcoming basketball games or whatever sports show or drama you watch? Your kids will have nothing to do without their Dora the Explorer or Pokemans? GET OVER IT! We all rely on these forms of entertainment WAY to much. Our TV's, videogames, Computers etc...
Granted I'm no better. But when my PC went through it's recent accident and I had nothing to do or anything (this was before our new TV and such) I read books or wrote stuff. When people call up complaining that their kids will have nothing to do, that disgusts me. SPEND SOME TIME WITH THEM! READ BOOKS TO THEM! Do something! A TV is not a babysitter!

I work for the Professor of Videos, in inbound sales. Nine times out of ten, I like my job. I do get idiots who freak out and tell us we're ripping them off because--horrors!-- they have to pay a shipping charge. Which is mentioned in the commercials, by the way.
Why do people insist on calling here on their cell phones? In a car? Or with tons of background noise?
I hate that. I have to practically scream the whole fricking call, and it annoys and disturbs my co-workers. They don't want to wait until they're on a land line phone, and gods forbid I ask them to call back from one. Pfft. Just had a guy do that to me, and he kept saying he couldn't hear me. I said 'Sir, I'm talking as loudly as I can without disturbing my coworkers or other callers."
Right after that the call dropped, and I thought that was that. But noooo, he called back, and got me again :P So I had to scream in not fun ways all over again. Thank the gods he only wanted the free CD, and I didn't have to bother with the upsells. :P
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- Current Mood
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amused
After working in a call center for about a month, I honestly can say I've never hated a job this much before.
Almost all of the customers we get are rude and hateful. I am so tired of being bitched at about things I can do absolutely nothing about.
I can't wait until I can quit this job.

The DO'S and DON'TS of when calling up customer service/tech support
DON'T start the call with your life story/sob story about how this horrible product/service has been ever since you got it. If it was that horrible since the start, you should've taken it back.
DON'T tell us that you're going to take back said product/cancel service and tell all your friends to with another said product/service, why? We DON'T CARE.
DON'T think that talking to a supervisor will get your way anymore than it did with us. They are trained to say NO. We, the agents, sometimes have to say no a little more politely.
DON'T call us up when you have no idea how to work said product and your husband/wife is the smart one, but because they aren't home you think you can manage to work it. Have patience and wait until they come home.
DON'T yell at us, curse at us, talk to us in a condescending manner. Why? Well because, acting like a little baby on the phone will NOT get your way any more or any faster. Also, that will cause us to NOT want to help you any more. We MIGHT act like our connection is getting bad and suddenly drop!
DON'T call us up without having the neccessary information that we need to help you. For example, if calling in about a TV, we NEED the model number. If calling in about a PC, we NEED to know what OS it's running. etc....etc...Telling us you DON'T know and that info isn't important and we should help you anyway only frustrates us and YOU more. Without knowing what we're working on it's like trying to breathe underwater. You think you can do it but it's NOT going to happen.
DON'T tell us how to do our job. Granted there are a few employees that aren't the brightest, but I DON'T tell you how to do your job, DON'T tell me how to do mine.
DON'T interrupt
DO keep focus
DO get straight to the point with your reason to call us. We don't want to talk to you, and appreciate when you get to the point.
DO understand that nothing in life is perfect. Your brand new TV/Car/PC broke down after a few hours of owning it sucks, but it DOES happen. Take care of your business and either take it back or put up with it.
DO understand I don't speak Spanish even though you accidently got onto my phone.
DO understand that I need your help as much as you need mine. Failing to describe what you are doing or what you see when troubleshooting does NOT help me. I am not psychic and can see through my phone or what you are doing on the PC.

Dear Consumer,
Though I do appreciate you buying our product and calling our customer tech support for assistance, in no way does that mean we actually care about you. We actually don't give a crap if you fell off the face of the earth. By telling us you will take back our product to the store means we never have to talk to you again.
By saying threats such as, "You don't stand behind your product" or "This is your product and this is your problem" does not makes us want to grovel to our knees and beg you to be happy with us in fact it does the opposite. While you yell and scream at us and talk to us in a very condescending manner, we have you on mute laughing our asses off or writhing in anger knowing you would never dare say that to our faces as you know you would expect a beat down from us. But Mr. I bought this 5000 dollar TV thinks he is better than me but I'm not the one with a broken TV. So at the end of the day I will go home and forget you even exist.
We talk to 100's of people a day and your problem is no more important than their's. You mean absolutely nothing to us. Spreading your internet smear campaign will not cause us to lose sales as we are a worldwide company that will probably not falter for a very long time.
Signed,
A Tech Support Agent
(Phew I feel much better now!)

We are call center agents. We get calls from all over the world. You talk to all walks and forms of life every single day you work. There are 6 billion people in this world and growing everyday yet you have to sit behind a computer and take calls from these people everyday. Never knowing who you are going to get and what the outcome will be. Does this make the job sound exciting? Well to the experienced person no it would not. After doing call centers for a year now I am quite tired of it. Never in my life has one job caused so much stress to my life in such a short amount of time. I have gained so much weight from just sitting around and I try to work out and lose weight but life tends to get in the way and sitting here for 10 hours a day doesn't help matters.
Being in a call center I see people that take this job WAY too seriously. I mean if that's what they wanna do in life then all the more power for them. Seeing as the company I work for is such a joke and they care little for their employee's I can't see how I would want to be here or even get promoted.
So two of my co-workers got their 6 month review. Basically it's an interview to determine whether or not you get a promotion. You know how to get a promotion here? Only by numbers, your stats. You could be the dumbest person on the phone and get a raise as long as you cheat the system. My two co workers are hard working and help people out on calls and basically all that good stuff and did they get a raise? Nope not a single dime. My 1st call center job based raises on how you were as a person and not numbers (even though that job did suck at the end). here it's based all on stats which is ridiculous. I've known some people working here for over a year and not seen a single dime and they were some of the best techs we had here. I don't blame them for quitting.
So basically to get a raise here you have to cheat the system which some techs have learned to skew their stat numbers and make themselves look very good on paper. I hate this place

So it has been about 5 weeks since I last posted in here. Things have not gotten any better here in this hell hole it's actually gotten worse. This job is slowly turning into my old job like at AOL where you have 5 million people breathing down your neck wanting you to finish every call in the allotted time they give you.
They have become so strict lately that you no longer follow the schedule they give you. Your manager decides when to give you breaks and lunches if you get any. If there are calls in queue you will not go on lunch or break until they are taken. If calls are backed up all day hahaha good luck, you stay on the phone! I'm getting tired of coming to this place day after day.
I'm so tired of this place being understaffed and we get bombarded with calls. I'm so tired of this place hiring a bunch of morons that take calls. I'm so tired listening to whiny people complain about the dumbest things about TVs. Yes your TV is broken, no you will not get a new one. I don't care you spent 3000 dollars on a TV and you just got it home today and it won't power on. TAKE IT BACK TO THE STORE don't call bother me! yes I realize you are 80 years old and unplugging a TV is the most advanced technical thing you've ever done and it requires a Master's Degree in engineering for you but don't give me this crap that you have stage 4 cancer and on the brink of death and want someone to come plug in your tv for you!
Another thing that gripes me is on some calls we have to write some detailed notes about the issue and what not. Sometimes we have to keep writing these notes after the call is over for 2-3 minutes. Yet you get yelled at for being in what they call aftercall for that long yet if you don't put in those notes you get yelled at by 3 different people. Basically a no win situation.
I used to have a very proactive attitude about this place. I was very helpful and friendly with everyone. Now that I'm seeing the changes that occur before my eyes I've just gone back to the way I used to be in high school just very reserved and wish to not be bothered by anyone. Only talking to a few select people and thats it. When management tries to be buddy buddy with me I sort of nonchalantly ignore it. I'm just here to do my job and get paid I'm not interested in moving up anymore after seeing how this place operates. I'm sure all call centers operate the same way so oh well.
Ok just got finished with a call as I am writing this. Honestly, people are fucking stupid. How hard is it to connect a cable box/dvd player/vcr? YOU JUST MATCH THE COLORS! Red goes with red, white goes with white, and yellow goes with yellow. But for some people they are either way too stupid or color blind and they get scared and don't know how to do it.
I sometimes miss AOL tech support calls. Alot of those calls were very stupid but some of them could be complicated. Having to go into the system32 menu and changing some registry keys around to fix a problem. These calls get rather dull and mundane because TVs are very easy and not complicated which makes it boring. I do think PC tech support calls attract extremely dumb people but TV tech support calls attract dumb people too but not as bad. The bad calls are the ones who don't understand to match the colors.
Honestly, how stupid can people be? Ugh I just hate it all. Fuck this job, fuck these people and fuck this place. I wish death upon all customers who call up for Philips tech support, just like I did with AOL.

So I sit here in my cubicle waiting for my friend to get off work so we can go to his house. Today is Saturday, just an FYI Saturday's are usually THE worse days in the center. Except today....today was a a good day. it was SLOW. I still had back to back calls cause of the queue I'm placed in, but I didn't feel like we were being pummeled by calls today. It was simply wonderful.
Also to add, I had one of the funniest calls I've ever heard today. Ok so the call is a normal one. Someone wanted to know how to change the input channels on her TV. She did not have the orignial remote for the TV so she had a universal. I advised her to try channeling down and it went through the input channels and she said the usual Thanks! You're so great! But she forgot to hang up the phone and I hear yelling:
"OMG I'M SO DUMB. HE MUST THINK I'M A DUMB BITCH CUNT WHO'S RETARDED!!!"
I had it on mute and I naturally burst into tears from the laughter. I could not contain it so I didn't release the call and kept listening. Basically her boyfriend or whomever was laughing at her and she was pissed. It lasted for 10 minutes until I hung up to take my break. That made my day.
I do want to get into more AOL calls but my mind seems to be a bit blank right now. So I'll save it for another day.
-Matt