Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

Just finished being online with one of the support staff at Nokia USA's phone number, thick Indian accent, and obviously had a hard time understanding my english.

Anyway lens shutter is falling apart and I've wasted 15 minutes of my life to try to explain to the agent that I need a new back cover/battery cover due to this.

He want's the whole damn phone sent in, and to keep it for 2-3 weeks plus shipping time, and has just spent the last 10 minutes of our lives telling me how to navigate the NokiaUSA website, with incorrect script.

Lord. Is that what we spend $500 on?

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

Let's put it this way..

I'm surprised a company like Nokia came up with maemo.

Edit: And wowza, you spent $500 on it?

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

Yup this what alot of company's do now they out source their customer service to other country's it keeps thier overhead and bills low.

They now setup shop AKA Call centers, like in the philipines, inida, mexico who knows where else. Here In california and utah salt lake city area UPS recently closed down 2 big call center locations with like 300 hundred emplyees working cause they are going to out source, so when you call UPS to track a package soon you'll be getting non USA people.

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

that's why i didnt bother with my warranty when my USB port broke of..
time for shipping, repairs, talking to customer service agents..

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

I just bought a whole house off ebay for $16 (including shipping). I'll send Nokia a nasty letter, but I'm not waisting more of my time on people who cannot converse.

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

This may come as a shock, but when you call different customer service lines at different times, you often get different reps! This means that their ability to converse may vary! If you call American customer service reps, you might get a bad one! If you call Indian customer service reps, you might get a bad one! And so on. If you don't have time to play this game, don't buy things!

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

Does anybody know how to expedite this poster's problems though?

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

The general technique would be to try to find a sympathetic person associated with Nokia to help. I would call Nokia and try to find a kind customer support person. If one is determined not to waste one's time talking to people at Nokia, I don't see any hope for expediting matters.

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

It's a big shame that I come to read posts so full of racism against poor indians and people working hard to earn some money! In my country saying something like what I read above would result in jail! I cannot understand why moderators are not banning racists from the forum and informing FBI.

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

It may or may not be racism but more likely its just a feeling of impersonality in the process when you are talking to someone half way around the world.

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

Warranty probably wont cover your lens cover as it can be caused by harsh use. You should just find new back cover and pay little for it. There was some website somewhere where they sell all n900 parts and back cover shouldn't be that expensive.

That's in finnish but ordering shouldn't be that hard: http://www.klc.fi/fin/tuotteet/Nokia-Varaosat-N900

Then i found this: http://www.thenokiaparts.com/eng/tuo...00-spare-parts
Dont know how it differs from klc as they have different stocks but same prices.

15€ for back cover ain't so bad. I paid 45€ for new lcd screen =)

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

May be FBI would handle racism in the past but IIRC their jobs has been replaced by Homeland security which works on completely opposite principle? I might be wrong.

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

woaaah 2-3 weeks! what do they want to do with such a huge time frame?

I had a similar problem with my N95-1 battery cover (broken hooks),
called nokia USA customer service, and they mailed in a new cover within a week.

I would say, call them again, and try.. if that wouldn't work, maybe email some VP QA of Nokia.

Guess the quality of N900 is not up to the mark. The steel lever, on one end of the kickstand on the outer cover broke within 2 months of usage.
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...ght=kick+stand

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

IMHO tolerance is what made Gandhi (a very popular Indian) a world renowned person. :D

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

no offense but you did screw up things a lot by yourself by being really unrealistic.

what about searching for closest
http://www.scfhuolto.fi/eng/kuvat/ku...stallation.jpg
and negotiate there?

Did you really thought that some support staff member could give you anything more than suggestion to send your phone to service?!?!?

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

they would talk to you? When the NSU bricked my phone No one from Nokia would deal with me because I live in Canada. Fortunately Newegg has fantastic support and exchanged it even though I was past my return date.

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

BS. I must defend olighak here against such serious and completely baseless accusations.

Full of racism? Get real. He made a simple statement of fact which supported the rest of his story about the lack of communication.


You are stereotyping all Indians as poor? That's racist! :eek:


Jail for identifying someone's accent? I'm glad I live in a free country...

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

So, how come that no matter when I call a customer service line, I get a drone that would have trouble passing Turing test? Do they have some kind of a script-playing server where they plug all their service reps, drugged into submission? Or is it a very special kind of people they hire?

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

When a company outsources their customer service, it is sold to an other company. This company's business idea is to keep their customer - the outsourcing company - happy. That means they do what their are asked to do - in this case to send the phone back; there is nothing else they can do. If Nokia starts to loose money when customer service is promising too much, they will move on to use another company. Critizising an individual person who just did what he/she had been told to do leads you nowhere.
Send feedback to Nokia that their partner in customer service is not doing a proper job.

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

A few months back a Nokia phone we had seem to have dissapeared and we had problems with the local shop we used. Nokias websites and phone numbers didn't always match up in the end i sent an Email via there contact us and was contacted by phone and email by a Customer resolutions company with a named agent who would look after my case. Who were very polite and listened well but thankfully I manged to get the phone back unrepaired and all they could do was offer for it to be sent off for repair again.

From memory the back cover batery and sd card you keep when you send off, so the phone would go off to be sent back again if you were lucky with a new cover and battery and possibly have the firmware updated. If unlucky i guess you would get the phone returned with no cover (as you have the old one)

Nokia do need to take some customer level look at the customer service they provide and see if both for them and the customer they can make some improvements.

The Wife from this epsisode decided she would never buy a phone from Nokia again and its Blackberry or Iphone for her.

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

Why not? My charger port pulled out and I followed the on-line support instructions to send it in and they replaced the device, no questions asked. I have no complaints (other than it will take me weeks to get the phone back to some semblance of the state it was in after all my tweaks).

I never even considered calling.

Cheers,
Fred

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

Here's some advice, taken from personal experience. YMMV.

Treat them like people. Ask them their name, feel free to chat with them a tiny bit, anything to lessen the monotony of their day. You'll find you often get a much more engaged and helpful response as a result, because surprisingly, bored people don't tend to function well.

Obviously, this won't work all the time (people are different and there are always idiots), but I've had pretty good success with it over numerous fields (banks, tech support, sales, ...) and it usually makes *me* a lot more happier to try make an effort to connect with another human being rather than interfacing with a 'faceless drone'.

(Having been on the other side of the phone some years ago, I can also say that things like this are appreciated. A lot.)

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

I was 8 years old when our teacher teached me that freedom is not to be allowed to do what I want, but freedom ends where the freedom of other people starts.
Which is according to you a free country? My country, in which racism and discrimination is punished, according to you is not free. I guess that according to you nazist Germany was free, because they were free to make suffer the jews, the minorities and also people with medical handicaps.
It's a big shame that I was attacked because I defended an indian warker. Maybe your country is really free, a country built on the blood of the indians, the TRUE americans exterminated in the name of freedom, and on the blood of the black people, slaves for hundreds years.
Sorry I don't agree with this topic. I will never complain because an indian instead of a WASP answers from a call center!

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

i think he has been waiting for a few years to find a reason to write that piece

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

they should be more like TMO!!!! i swear it is such a enjoyable pleasure every time i contact tmo customer support. i always get a happy upbeat English speaking person on the other end. usually a female who speaks perfect freaking english. they are never nasty or rude and the customer is always right. they will try there darnest to fix what ever your issue is in spite of being relatively ignorant of the phones they offer. they are however very knowledgeable of there own plans.

when i call nokia? OMG it is a freaking head ache. it is actually physically painfull to have to pick up the phone and wait all day to talk to some one who simply does not understand what you are trying to say. all to tell you they have to escalate the matter to another tier tech support despite you telling them to do that after briefly explaining the problem to them the first 4 of 12 times. i hate having to call nokia support. a lot. a whole lot. and then even more then that

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

i dont really buy the working for peanuts and overworked routine either.. professionalism is professionalism if you are no good at your job and dont enjoy it you need to get out of it. i also agree with the above poster but coudnt be bothered to write something.

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

Oh jesus, this isn't about race, it's about whether someone is suitable to do a particular job or not, and based on the fact that this particular guy had a thick Indian accent, which the OP found hard to understand, and the fact that he had trouble understanding what the OP's problem was I'd say he wasn't suitable for the job.

If the call operator had been from England, but with a really unintelligible accent, and hard of hearing so it was difficult to explain the problem then it would be exactly the same scenario..

Had he said ' Oh yeah, there was no problems in communicating at all, but he was Indian, what the hell Nokia?'

then fair enough..

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

maybe they can pay the service reps more money and give them better benefits so that way they can demand a more professional staff. its not really fair that if i have a tech or some other kinda customer service issue "I" being the one with the problem (and may also be slightly frustrated) have to provide "customer service" via of breaking up the monotony of of their day to the "customer service representative" that is just ludicrous. i think if you have a job you need to do it to the best of your ability and have self pride. if your job sucks you should quit. if you cant handle these daily issues then customer service may not be the place for you.

on another note. if i speak english i would also liek to speak to some one else who speaks english so we can accurately exchange ideas. repeating things 4 times and trying to guess what the other person really means is just gonna make a already frustrated customer irate

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

idk, i kinda think this poster already knows the answer to this. No DICE. all they can do is send the phone off and wait or try and get a new back piece on ebay or something. or drive all the way to the support center themselves. i think this post was more of a vent post. of course it would be nice to post here and find a new secret inside answer to get things done faster at nokia but it comes across to me as more of a vent type of thing

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

He is talking complete nonsense, as you say the issues is not he was indian the issue was that he couldnt understand his accent.

he could have wrote "i couldnt understand his thick <insert any nationality in the world>"

This became such an issue in England that it is now used as a selling point by retailers. Adverts such as “call centres in the UK” are common. Is this racist? No, the marketing department know that there is nothing more annoying than calling up a call centre and speaking to someone you can barely understand.

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

Well, the scotts have a thick accent as well. They wouldn´t be great for manning telephone operator boards in the US either. Neither would my grandmother do a great job as a Nokia phone operator with the way she puts accents on words and her lack of vocabulary. But she´d probably not be any worse than the one I talked to yesterday.

Don´t equate criticism or praise of verbal skills and pronounciation with racism, that´s really judging yourself out of discussions. Had this been a scot, I´d have said thick scottish accent instead.

A phone operators working tool is his voice and language skills. If he cannot understand the language he is supposed to be working in, or make himself clear, then he´s not fit for the job.

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

"True" Americans? WTF?

You come here professing undying tolerance and hatred for racism and then exercise exactly the same principals you are fighting against when it comes to "Americans".

First of all: We have a word for "true" Americans, we use "Native" - as in, the people that were here long before "we" showed up. So not only is your statement an absolute falsehood using any "current" definition of the word "American", since by and large "racism" is not an acceptable ideology anymore in the US, and "true" americans in the modern sense of the word is simply people living in the United States of America currently.

But it's also completely wrong relating to a more traditional use of the word American (someone living in the "Americas") since a "True" American in that sense is anybody living in either the North or South America continents - and "true" being taken as "pure", in North America at least, those are "Native" Americans.

As for having people arrested for speaking their minds... we have something called Freedom of Speech here; and having served in the US Military I can quite justly use the phrase "I may not agree with what you're saying, but I'm prepared to die for your right to say it."

So how about taking that holier than thou attitude somewhere else. Identifying an accent on the phone is not racism; and having a lack of communication because of either party or both are having difficulty understanding eachother due to accents or non-fluent languages is also not racist. What matters is that an employee of a company that serve's english speaking customers was unable to adequately express or understand the problem as it stood in english - and therefore is a failure of the employee and the company in providing adequate customer service - in other words, failing to do their job.

This is not racism.. it is a fact. If the OP had used some kind of derogatory nickname for Indians or made negative generalizations, oh wait: such as you just did regarding americans, then I would agree it was racist. But this is what I see:
That sounds like a fact.. not a racist comment. You can replace Indian with any race.. everyone has accents - and when two people are sitting speaking english in two very different and very thick accents.. nobody knows wtf is going on.

"What we have here... is a failure to communicate."

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

dont forget he referred to him as the 'indian wanker' in his last post. charming...

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

erm.. I just clicked all 4 pages and searched for "wanker"..

I seem to have completely missed this post... link?

If true, yes - I disagree with such terminology. Though, as I said, has nothing to do with FBI or getting people arrested. Now.. had he professed or advocated people go out and 'beat an indian' in honor of his unfortunate experience.. that would require intervention.

Simply making a statement that "I don't like XYZ" is not, should not, and damn well better never be "illegal" and warrant jail time.

But, as I said, doesn't mean I agree with using racist terms, slangs, or derogatory meanings and over-generalizations.

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

This illustrates the fact that customer service is a lottery. My contacts with TMO have been disasters. I got wrong and ignorant information. Once I spent about an hour on the phone with them because I had decided to get an expensive prepaid plan, one that required ZERO credit. I was told that the supervisor needed to call me back the next day. I made an appointment for the time.

No one EVER called me back. A few weeks later I got a form letter saying my credit application had been rejected. Repeat, this was a no credit needed, prepaid plan.

It may be that Nokia employs a lot of drones. Drones are usually created by fear. Companies give customer service reps 20 or so questions and very little information or understanding about their jobs. Scary, demanding customers and employers create representatives who are afraid to vary from their scripts.

However, all companies have qualified representatives. You just have to find them. They might speak English poorly or well (ever notice that some of the smartest, best informed people on this site are not necessarily the best writers of English? The same goes for reps)

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

Please do note the word "tiny" in there though. Turning what should be a five minute or less phone call into a forty-five minute lecture on your life, hobbies, and what you're cooking for dinner will not endear you to the phone operator at the other end of the line. And then she'll come home in a rotten mood.

Err, or so I've heard.

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

imperiallight is not talking about me, I didn´t call anyone a wanker. He´s talking about Patroclo´s last post, who misspelled "indian worker" as "indian warker" (not wanker).

http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...3&postcount=23

So imperiallight´s post is wrong.

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

You must be talking about this

He said "indian warker" and I believe he meant "worker", not "wanker", and also that isn't the OP - that's the guy professing non-tolerance for a difference of opinion.

ETA: beat by olighak.

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

I do find that Americans often refer to foreign customer service reps as if they were all poorly informed and reps who spoke good English were all well informed. This is far from true. I have spoken to and worked with many American customer service reps who didn't understand their jobs at all. And yes, I am an American.

Re: Awesome Nokia support (sarcasm alert)
 

I didn't write "wanker" but "wonker" because I wrote in wrong way the word "worker" becaue I have a lot of respect for "workers" in the way it is used in the slogan "Workers of the world, unite!"
But I see that there is who took the grammatical error as a pretext to make believe that I am saying what I don't think at all.
Shame! Shame ! Shame! :mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad: :mad::mad::mad: