Bad Experience with outsourced XM CS

[HowardPM]

I'm so annoyed right now. First let me preference this with I've been an XM subscriber for 8 years.

I currently have 2 XM radios on an account they are both in cars. 1 has a promotional half off rate, and 1 has a multi-radio discount rate.

I just purchased a new car and it came with Sirius instead of XM. So I called XM to cancel the radio with the promotional account since I no longer have that car.

First I speak to someone I can barely understand who said her name was Melissa (ya right) she transfers me to the cancellation department (40 minutes on hold). I explain to the rep who also I can barely understand, I want to cancel one of my radios. This would force the radio on the multi-radio plan to be the master radio. So I'm told I would need to pay $145, even though I've already pre-paid for 2 radios for a year. I then tell her I don't want to do that and transfer the promotional rate from the radio I'm canceling to the multi-radio plan, and refund me the pre-paid difference from the old multi-radio plan. Of course she said its not possible.

I ask to talk to a manager, I get put on hold for 15 minutes, and of course I get disconnected.

I call back and immediately ask to talk to a supervisor, surprise surprise, none are available and I can barely understand the girl on the phone. I explain the situation to this new person on the phone, and she said she needs to transfer me to canceleations, I told her I didn't want to wait 45 minutes again, she said it wouldn't take that long, she transfers me over, after 15 minutes of waiting I hang up because I'm pissed.

I'll probably try again tomorrow, but this company has the worst CS I've ever dealt with.

P.S. I find it ridiculous that Sirius/XM has not upgraded their systems to merge accounts, they are basically exploiting anyone who wants to have both services and not giving them a multi radio discount.

[Mike Nassour]

1. You've obviously never dealt with Tracfone! (a reseller of AT&T cell phone service)

2. I THINK that XM's customer service has always been offshore.

3. The merging of the two systems is apparently more difficult than anyone out here in customer-land imagined. Given the efforts of Sirius to cut costs when it bought XM (forget this "merger" nonsense), one would certainly think that more money would have been realized by merging the two accounting systems than by trying to squeeze more money out of that relatively small group of subs who have both systems.

I feel your pain, though. Customer service has completely disappeared from the end of any 800 number, no matter which company you're talking about!

[jeremyandrews]

Try calling at different times.

Sometimes I get customer service reps that I couldn't understand with extremely thick accents, other times (like when I re activated this radio) I got someone who spoke clear English.

Where does XM outsource to, India? India is the most popular call center country. Its a booming industry there.


As for Sirius I usually get someone who speaks clear English. In the afternoon they are always Canadian.

[HowardPM]

Called their executive service # today. Got someone from Texas, couldn't have been more helpful. He understood exactly what I wanted to do, made it happen, was off the phone in 10 minutes.

[Mike Nassour]

All it takes is an hour of training and someone who gives a damn.

[BigRadioFan]

Companies that outsource customer service are making the biggest mistake ever.

If at all possible, I avoid business with such companies because I know it will be nearly impossible to get help if there is a problem. An example is Office Depot. I had such a bad experience ordering a laptop from them due to outsourced customer service (they just kept resending me the same model despite it not having the feature I wanted like 4-5 times), I will probably never order any product from them again. I haven't in at least 3 years on principal.

Same with Dish Network. I cancelled my account there, went with DirecTv, and never look back. The outsourced service never took care of me. I was overbilled the entire 3 months I was a subscriber, then when I finally gave up and cancelled, they tried to bill me like $500+ for the equipment. Haha. I never sent it back or paid them either. They owe me that in frustration alone for the dozen or so hours combined I had to try to communicate with their staff.

I almost feel like companies that outsource customer service are trying to scam customers. THEY CANNOT REALLY ASSIST CUSTOMERS so why are they answering the phone representing a company???

At MOST, sometimes they get lucky and come up with a solution, but the majority of customers spend hours longer than they'd have to with a trained US agent. Doesn't it cost more overall for these companies to keep us on the phone for 2 hours trying to come up with a halfass solution that would take someone in the US 15 minutes to figure out? Then more than likely, a majority of us still have to escalate the call to a US rep somehow.

If the actual cost (extra time from the "help" themselves, extra 800 # usage, etc) isn't higher, adding in the costs related to customer dissatisfaction and mistakes made by outsourcers should do it.

Ridiculous that there are still some companies that don't get this. Find me one person praising their India customer service experience.

[arvetus]

I hate overseas call centers. I'll talk to someone in the UK or someone in Canada, but that's it. Outsourcing to the Philippines or India or Pakistan or wherever is just ridiculous. They can't understand us, we can't understand them, everybody gets frustrated and nothing gets done.

If I could help it, I would not do business with companies that do this, unfortunately that is not always possible. But until they take away my talk radio shows (which was why I got XM in the first place), I guess I'll keep it. They've already taken one live show and put it in a different time slot, thus it's now the previous day's show. I've already pitched a fit about that...

[marker101]

[Richie]

I read recently that India is so overloaded with call centers outsourced by U.S. companies that they have had to do outsourcing themselves. Guess where? Back to economically depressed areas of the U.S.! So the next customer rep you talk to might be sitting in a doublewide a few miles away, not India.

[ts8586]

[RodLCR]

this might not be relevant...nor useful in this case....
I was a CSR for XM for 2yrs...in Panama City, Panama.....but trying to cut back even more on their budget, they went to other countries, like egypt, and that made XM CS even worst, at least we knew what we were doing.....but they are starting from zero....
so it might be a while until they get the knowledge they need to make things like the one for the original post....now Im a bill collector....so watch your car pmts....hahahaha
regards...

[davegl]

If I get someone I cannot understand, I just politely say so, and ask to be transfered to someone on my continent. Sometimes it works, sometimes not.

[johnnyelectron]

I tried to find out about a GM Credit card, and the guy (Raj) had very little clues about how to answer any of my questions except to read off of his cue cards. Very frustrating.
As long as we Americans continue to allow American companies to lay-off American workers and ship the work overseas, they'll continue to do so.
TAKING IT TO THE EXTREME:
I even read that McDonald's is studying outsourcing the drive-thru order taking!!! Can you believe that - instead of keeping a high school kid employed, some 2nd or 3rd world country person would take your order, put it in the computer for the kitchen to make! Surprised that they don't have voice recognition, but thanks to loud exhaust systems, hopefully that won't happen.
"Pardon me sir, would you like French Fries with that?"

[CTGuy]

[ercjncpr]

I never deal with telephone base CS anymore unless I absolutely have too. I try to accomplish everything online as much as possible