This one is a common pet peeve for those of us who handle this in our personal household or for our businesses. I had to wait a day to post this or I would have posted this in all caps. Employees of companies who cannot fluently speak or understand the English language is not only beyond frustrating but it can cause headaches for the customers having to deal with them.
Yesterday I spent an unnecessary 1.5 HOURS on the phone with a representative of a company I use for my personal business trying to workout a problem that was directly caused by a language barrier. The company was comcast cable. Last month I had to add a box to my account for one of my rental properties. In theory it should have been a very simple task and phone call. But it wasn't, when I called to have an additional box installed the person I talked to not only had a problem fluently speaking English but also had a problem with understanding it as well. Granted, I have a southern accent but it isn't so bad that people routinely have a hard time understanding what I'm saying.We both struggled to understand one another. It was quite frustrating and after I got off the phone I remember telling my wife "How much you want to bet I'll have to call back next month because he'll screw the order up?" Well, my bill came in yesterday and it was over $520. In the struggle of us not understanding each other and having to continue to ask each other to repeat what we said, it is obvious there were times that the other just assumed they understood the other party. According to my bill I had upgraded to an entirely different package that included a lot of premium content. It took 1.5 hours of my time to undo what should have never been done. All due to an unqualified employee.
Unfortunately this is becoming very common when dealing with companies and from my experiences is getting worse.
