Yes I said it FUCK OUTSOURCING! I've had my fill of big companies outsourcing technical support to oversea companies. I am tired of talking to a screen reading idiots who cant think outside the screen. Companies like Earthlink, Verizon and Vonage think its ok to stoup to this level of crappy service. I mention these companies because they are the ones I've dealt with and had this problem. Vonage being the most recent.

I had a simple hardware problem and called to try and get a new voice terminal or see if they could fix it with a simple firmware upgrade. I get this guy from the other side of the world who can barely speak English and he tried everything on the screen which is in most cases designed to make the consumer feel its a problem on his end and not the companies. My problem was that my phone would make this loud chirp every once in a while and if someone called in on my other line both lines would die and my voice terminal would reset or it would reset if I tried to call the other line from the other. The guy told me it was the fact that I didn't have enough bandwidth, WHICH I would have believed if it weren't for that fact that I have 3mbit/512k cable which should be more then enough for voice on top of the fact that a friend of mine has 2 lines on 768k/128k DSL! with no problems. Once I told him that he made me go to dslreports.com to verify it. Of course dslreports said I have almost 3mb/400k bandwidth EVEN when I was on the phone with the guy using some of the bandwidth for the phone. That's more then 70% bandwidth left with 1 line so I should be able to handle 2 right? RIGHT! Well after that 30 minute venture he says "I am detecting a hardware failure" like the actually have a tool to detect it and he couldn't use it before or something? Ok after this he says he will send me out another one and I have to send them the old one back. Then he says "Ok, we have charged your credit card for $99 until you return the old one". I'm like WTF the box itself is only $30 at bestbuy! he says "well best buy is running a deal that's why its so cheap. We have to cover if you do not return the old box". So I said why would I not return the box if its broken? he said "because it might not be broken and you are trying to get a second box for free". So I'm thinking didn't he just say he was detecting the problem? So I ask him and he replies "ok sir your box is on the way is there anything else I can help you with?" So I'm like fuckit send the shit and hurry up! NOW the next day is even better. Aprently the -idiot- disabled my old box so now I'm without phone at all. What else could go wrong I don't know but I'm pretty pissed already! I send am e-mail in reply to the new order invoice I got and haven't got a reply yet. Granted it is Saturday now I don't expect a real speedy response BUT I do expect one soon!

OK, this one isn't going to be as long as the Vonage one because I've had time to cool on this one before I wrote this. It includes the all mighty Brighthouse too. One day my cable goes out so I call Earthlink. Again I get some overseas moron who can only read hats on the screen and doesn't bother to check elsewhere. He tells me there is something wrong with my account but he cant tell what it is. So I'm like "FIND OUT DUMB ASS!" he cant figure it out so he tries to forward me to another department which ends up being so stupid ass voicemail. So I leave a message and wait an hour or two. No reply so I call back and get ANOTHER overseas dumb ass who cant figure it out so he tells me to call Brighthouse. I do and guess what? I GET ANOTHER FUCK IN OVERSEAS DUMB ASS! I'm pretty pissed at this point so I talk to the guy as calmly as I can and ask if he sees any problems. He says "yes, your account has been disabled." I'm like WTF?!? He says that someone at Earthlink disabled my account. So I call Earthlink back and guess what I GET AN AMERICAN! HAH! thought I was going to say overseas dumb ass right? Yeah I was surprised too. I talk to him and he gets it all fixed in a matter of minutes when 3 fuckin oversea dumb asses couldn't get it combined. Now I still have Earthlink cable mainly because they are the cheapest and fastest in Central Florida and I haven't had any other problems since. But I do remember when Earthlink had good customer support. Not so sure now.

I haven't had Verizon phone service for a while now because of the shit they pulled on me. I suppose this one is more the companies fault then the technical support. But they didn't help any. Ok, I had phone through Verizon and I got behind on the bill mainly because they went sending me my bills and I forgot. They shut my phone off and I called to find out WTF is up and they told me why. I didn't have the $200 all at once at the time so I told them I had to wait a bit. Now a month passes and I get another bill from them with $60 + late fees added and I get fuckin pissed because I haven't even had phone service for the month at all. I call and guess what? I GET A OVERSEAS DUMB ASS! starting to get the theme? if not maybe your an overseas dumb ass. Now I talk to this guy and he says "well it shows your still in service." and I say "well I don't have fuckin service because my bill was behind" and he goes "well blah blah blah" repeating what he said before. So I say just turn the shit off I'll go elsewhere he says "ok" and all is good right? WRONG! I get another bill the next month with $60 and late fee PLUS some 900 number fees. Keep in mind I haven't had phone service for 2 months now. Apparently someone else 900 charges got put on mine and the idiot didn't cancel my account so I got an American manager finally and got the account closed.

Now don't get me wrong I don't hate everyone from overseas. Just the idiots that work at call centers who don't know shit about the service they are providing -technical- support for and don't even bother to try and learn to help people better. They only read the computer screen. And because they do it cheaper every big company is using them. It not only hurts our economy it destroys a companies good support standings. I wonder how many other people are having problems with these companies because of THE OVERSEAS DUMB ASS!