::space:.TUNA:..

This is a story of the failture of out-sourcing, and how out-sourcing will eventually kill a company.

My cousin Olivia got a new cellphone with Sprint, she decided to switch from Verizon to Sprint because Sprint offers a local number for Hood River, where her parents lives, this way they can call her for free. So she placed an order on the website, the Sprint website then assigned a Vancouver (WA), then she called again to get a local Hood River number.

From the boredom of doing nothing at midnight, I decided to help Olivia activate the phone. But for some reason the ESN (Electronic Serial Number) is invalid when I tried to activate it from another phone. So I started reading the manual, which tells nothing except … telling you to activate it on their website. But the problem with their online activiation is that they require you to have an account with them already. Out of frustration, we finally figured out if we use the unactivated cellphone, we can reach a different system.

So we got to their computer voice recognition system, which only understands Indian-accient English I guess, because I said, “activate the phone”, nope, didn’t work, Olivia said “activate”, “activate account”, “activate the phone”, “start the phone service”, and none of them worked, but instead, she was transfered to the account management service. Right off the bat she was having trouble talking to the customer support personnel, who had a very strong Indian accent English, and apparently kept telling Olivia that she doesn’t need a new number, and Olivia had no option but to say, “Hey, listen to me, just listen to me for a second….” But apparently the support woman still doesn’t understand the differences between Oregon and Washington, and doesn’t know that different state has different area code.

That went on for about 20 minutes, eventually Olivia thought they have figured something out, and the support asked Olivia to call back with a different phone. But guess what? when she tried to call back right away, their office has been closed. What kind of crappy service is that?

Now on the other hand, Verizon offers the best customer service that I have never felt before, sometimes I just want to call them to talk to them, they make me feel like I own them (which I do to a certain extend), and they treate me like a king. I think if I am really tired and I am driving, I might jsut call them to chat with them.