Unable to Communicate with Best Buy Customer Service

you are so dam right !! just this week i needed to call sprint and of
course i found out i was calling the Philippines ! next i had to call
pay pal and guess what ? same thing when i called dell and many other
companies . so basically i wanna start a website with a list of all
companies that have English speaking representatives and a list of
those that don't. maybe by giving all Americans a forum to express
their views on this and use their buying power to decide who we wanna
buy from we will actually get English speaking people answering our
calls
by the way same goes for companies like Verizon who have these totally
non-sophisticated voice operated systems and that could drive you
bananas. i personally signed up with at&t over Verizon for that
particular reason
anyone wanting to help or promote similar ideas please contact me at
wewantenglish@yahoo.com

This may already have been said..

Most Americans don't want to work phone customer service. As someone
who's worked as a telemarketer in the past, I know it's true.

I agree!! Add Chrysler to that list. I defy you to call their
customer care number and get someone with a non-indian accent. The
odds of you calling a place and repeatedly getting an American citizen
that just happens to be originally from India on the phone every time
you call is astronomically slim! They, and alot of other companies,
are flat out out- sourcing to get WAY cheaper labor...and the only
benefit is to that companies bottom line and there really just no
getting around that.

I stopped reading your letter at "DUH!"..I'm sure Best Buy did the
same.

While asking "Have you moved?" sounds like a duh kind of question,
many times representatives are required to ask such stupid and
seemingly nonsense questions.

Now, I do understand your frustration. However, you hung up after
being on hold for five minutes. When I call a help line these days, I
honestly pull out a book and just prepare to sit there for however
long it takes. It is annoying and it is frustrating, but sometimes you
just have to stick with it awhile longer.

"I advised him that I needed to change my address for billing. His
first question to me was, "Have you moved?" DUH! Of course, I politely
said yes that was why I was calling."

"DUH" reveals your state of mind. The CSR was confirming what you
needed. All that is required is to confirm the answer is "yes".

"relatively simply street name - Lawrence. After spelling it for him
slowly two times, he still could not spell it correctly substituting
the "a" in Lawrence to "i". At this point, I requested to speak with
someone who spoke English more plainly"

A relatively simple street names is "Green". If English isn't this
CSR's native language, "Lawrence" isn't necessarily simple. My street
name is 6 letters, and I can't get 1 out of 10 English speaking people
to spell it, speaking the letters slowly. For 13 years I have battled
it. But you just have to do what it takes to get the person to
understand.

"after about 5 minutes, I hung up."

Well, DUH, how are you going to get what you need that way?

The "truth"? The truth is you need to exercise more patience dealing
with CSR's. They can handle what you're looking for, just don't
expect it to happen on 10 seconds.

I'm not a really big fan of outsourcing, but I think you've made a
huge leap of logic which may or may not be accurate.

Just because someone speaks with an accent doesn't mean they are in a
foreign country. It means that English is not their primary language.
Lots and lots of folks within the good ole U.S. speak with a thick
accent. For instance, lots of folks in the northeast speak Italian
(which is kind of cool), but they are just as American as the guy from
Georgia. It's just a part of our melting pot.

Best Buy's branded credit card is actually handled by HSBC. You
probably want to be sending them a letter rather than Best Buy. Best
Buy won't be able to do anything (even if they were inclined to do
so).