Dear Chase Bank Visa;
When you bought out my Yahoo! Visa card from whoever owned it last, you raised my APR rate to a totally ridiculous rate, like 16.25%, which is ludicrous considering my amazing credit score. So I called to say "WTF" and you said, "Don't like it, CANCEL." So I got a new card, moved all my recurring and automatic payments to the new card, paid off the balance and called you back to cancel.
In the meantime, you've moved your call center to the Far East somewhere, probably Mumbai or Bangladesh by the sound of the people answering your phones. This was a huge mistake on your part, Chase. I had to call 3 times today because the first agent needed batteries in her headset and she could not hear me. I kept yelling CHANGE THE BATTERIES IN YOUR HEADSET*, but she did not hear me, so she hung up on me. Then I called back and could not understand the second person to save my life. Do you even screen for English Language Skills, Chase? Do you? Then I called back a THIRD time, and the third CSR spoke just enough English to transfer me to a native English speaker, to which I said, "Wow, I am canceling my account, and if I weren't calling for that, your Mumbai call center is enough to make me cancel anyway. That is the worst customer service I think I've ever experienced!"
Anyway, Chase, your crappy offer to lower my rate NOW, when I've gone to all the trouble to move all my shit AND call you three fucking times in a row, was too little too late. Plus, 12.99%, are you high? I don't pay more than 10% ever, Chase, you should know that by now. We've been together since Yahoo was a baby, you don't think I know better than that? The benefit of having an awesome credit score is that I can get pretty much any APR I want, and I shop around and I always get the best rate. I'm not wet behind the ears, Chase. You take your 12.99% and you shove it up your curry vindaloo.
Goodbye forever,
Styro
*I managed a call center for a little while at a previous job, and 99% of our calls that were, "I can't hear you" could be fixed by putting new batteries in the battery pack for the headset. I kept a packet of batteries in my back pocket for just this occasion, and I'd switch the agent to the handset, change their batteries, and switch them back. It fixed almost every single case of this problem.
Comments
One of the biggest problem with those call centers in India is that it is one giant company that runs customer service for 80 different accounts. And most of their customer service agents answer calls for different businesses with each ring of the phone -- i.e. answer a call from Chase, then McDonald's, then CitiBank.
My old company did a huge outsourcing to India (Bangalore) and there were some people from our office who went to cross-train the people for like 3 months and they said it was the biggest mistake ever. Imagine a sweatshop full of telephones. And the people are all super nice, because they appreciate the job, but the whole time you're like what the hell did this guy just say?
Since we're a global Borg, we have a lot of people in other countries and since I am not always good with accents (especially from Spain & Portugual, where they talk a mile a minute) I usually ask the people to switch to instant messaging. That works great.
And now that I read your post, I'm going to call Citibank and get my interest lowered.
i call the 1k desk (super duper high level) for my boss, which is generally awesome service. IF you call before 5pm central, when you get someone in the US.
if you call after 5pm central, you get india. in general, i've found i get much better service if i hang up and call back (sometimes numerous times) until i get someone that speaks semi-decent english.