Bucco, let me say that I am firmly against American companies outsourcing their customer service centers to foreign countries if they cannot employ reps who can be understood by the people they are supposed to be serving. And also that I have always respected your opinions, while not always agreeing with them.

That said, I stand by all my other reasoning concerning some Americans' isolationist lack of regard for anything other than what they grew up with, and their refusal to embrace the changing global community.

I am old, and I have tried to learn three different languages. And I have not been overly successful. In fact, one could say that I have failed miserably. I have lived abroad enough to understand what immigrants are up against.

No slamming at least not from me. I understand what you say, but how am I intolerant or none understanding or any of the other words seem to apply to those who feel we are "giving away the store".

Let me tell you a true story about me....will try hard to keep it short. Back in eastern Pa, I was pretty involved in the community. The spanish population was growing rapidly an we noticed very very few spanish speaking youngsters participating in our youth programs. In order to reach out, I contacted a guy who knew the spanish community quite well...he identified a few leaders to me and I asked them if we could sit down and talk. We did...explained how we wanted to invite them to have their youth participate in our youth sports programs and how could we help them to make that happen.

They politely THREE DIFFERENT TIMES said NO....they said that the spanish community would like us to begin youth programs that were JUST for spanish youth.....they said, that is how they do it...whomever they was supposed to be....they did not want any involvement with non spanish speaking youth BUT WANTED US to create one for just them. These are parents who came to our town to work in our factories and as one guy told me "had no intent every to integrate into the community, but whatever we could do FOR them was fine"

That attitude prevails today I am afraid.

I want nobody to be suffer any discrimination, but seems to me, that this attitude will serve nobody at all.

Again, it is not anything even close to isolation at all......I ask again why you simply state one side...how we should learn spanish and NOTHING about those coming here and any responsibility whatsoever.

BUT YOU wish all other Americans to learn spanish ?

Listen, no doubt there are many many racists or whatever the word of the day is.....but you just ignore the obvious responsiblity of those who come here....in my opinion there is more responsibility on those folks than on the existing citizens.

If most americans feel like you....that we are on the defensive and those visitors need not learn our language (not officially) and that we have the major part of the responsibility, wow....I will become very active when we finally have that immigration debate.

I don't wish all Americans to learn Spanish. And I don't say that those coming to our country should not attempt to learn English. My hope is that their children will grow up bilingual. Their parents are the ones who are not speaking so much English, and my point is that as you age, your ability to sop up another language changes because you learn it from a different part of your brain. And that is a proven fact.

I am trying to point out how the American community is diversifying, and also how hard it is to learn a different language as you age. I am only arguing against those who say "English or get out of America." And I am asking for some patience--not with corporate America, who is shipping our customer support off to people with poor English accents, but for the immigrants who are here legally working and providing services we need. My hope is that the children of these immigrants will become productive, English-speaking Americans. We have to help them get there.

Your example of what happened in eastern PA is an eye opener, I admit.

It seems logic and reason have escaped many of us. I speak a little Spanish and a little French. I am willing to learn the language of India. Do you think I can be an effective customer service agent in one of those countries? Back to the original point of this thread. I call customer service for help. If i do not understand that person, they are not fulfilling their job description. I am not helped. They are not helping me. I am not racist or intolerant. I just don't understand what they are saying. The customer service is non existent. The call was a waste of my time and the companies money as I did NOT receive the service I requested. What is so hard to understand about this or do you not understand my English?

Not likely due to global warming. :doh:

I agree with you perrjojo. I don't have an issue with the people who were hired. I have an issue with the corporations who are trying to cut costs at the expense of their customers by hiring people who can't be understood. I don't care how much they are trying to satisfy their stockholders. If they can't provide adequate customer service, maybe their business will fall off to the point that their stockholders will be negatively impacted as well. (But I doubt they will care, frankly.) My initial complaint was with the OP who demeaned the customer service rep by making up a name for him. And I don't believe for a minute that he heard the rep say his name was Hashish.

Give it up people this thread isnt worth it any more.

Usted puede obtener una respuestas diferentes dependiendo de si se pide que en The Villages que en Miami.

Usted debe trabajar en su Inglés antes de intentar española.

oui

Anglais mesdames et monsieurs

Nunca he visto nada malo con su Inglés.

Gotta say - this topic has taken a turn for the worst. I quit. Not worth aggravating myself for kind of nonsense.

Important topic!!!!!
Lets all talk about YOUR safety and the safety of your neighbors.
Today after a lightning strike at about noontime, a large section of Buttonwood lost our COMCAST Internet, cable TV and land line telephone service for approximately SEVEN HOURS.
Cell phone service was spotty at best.
We had no way (other than the radio)of knowing about the track of the storm, tornado watches or warnings.
Would have been very difficult to try to contact someone if (fire, sheriff, ambulance) was needed. We are an AED community and our responders would have been unable to receive their calls.

At 5:00 a small group of 13 neighbors meet at a restaurant for our weekly Monday night dinner together.
After toasting COMCAST with our drinks, we shared our cell phone conversations with the representatives each of us had reported our outages to.
Let's begin with the automated answering system to report outages that WAS FULL so......
we waited to speak to a human representative. So even though we ALL told our respective representatives that an entire neighborhood was without service after a lightning strike had occurred somewhere nearby, they proceeded to follow their SCRIPT and ask us if there were downed wires or could the weather have affected our service. If they were from Florida they would have a CLUE that we were experiencing severe weather. Still following their SCRIPT, they had us turning modems on/off, plug in/out, " do the hokey pokey and turn yourself around." Still CLUELESS even though we ALL said this occurred after a
lightning strike and the entire neighborhood is without service, three people were told that they were the FIRST ones to report this.
They then proceeded to tell us that would make an appointment for technicians to come to our individual houses on Wednesday and Thursday. They didn't get it!!! They just kept going back to that stupid SCRIPT!!!

If there was a water or electric problem in our former state, the respective companies could tell us if it was widespread and an approximate time when service could be restored.

Comcast is inferior in customer service and is getting worse.
So where are these phone representatives??? Some of us asked where we called today.......
India, China, Columbia.
"Entire neighborhood" is not in their script book, they don't understand it.

What kind of nonsense do you usually aggravate yourself with?

Marigold,
I thought Buttonwood had the option of Brighthouse.

Unfortunately Brighthouse is for those south of 466a. Wish we had that option. Before we moved here three years ago, we were enjoying the great service of Fios.

Beautiful clear , truly hi def picture quality. Wish that was here!

Can't have what both ways?

I think you are all too young. you clearly don't remember when every large city had a cacophony of newspapers in every language which could support circulation. Gracie in Cincinnati there were competing German language newspapers well into the mid century. Immigrants did not learn English well, they continued to speak their native tongue within their community. Most jobs were physical labor and did not require fluency in English so it didn't matter. Yes there were night schools available and they were used, free night schools paid for both privately and with tax dollars. But the myth that all those millions of immigrants that came here before we closed the borders in the twenties just gave up their German, Italian, Russian, Greek, Yiddish etc is pervasive and wrong. So ask yourself, with those large retirement communities in Mexico and Costa Rica, do you think the Americans who have moved to these nations do not expect that services will be available in English and that the locals should expect these immigrants to learn Spanish or suffer?

Very nicely formulated statement about this wonderful country. Thank you.

I just got off the phone with Comcast. I called 800-COMCAST. This was for a question regarding an email address on my account that I could not fix over their website.

I did not get the "press 1 for English". I got a lady with a Southern accent who listened to my question, verified my identity, and looked at my account, and fixed the email address on the spot. She thanked me for being patient in the 3 minutes it took to fix. I asked where her service center was located and she said, "Madison, Mississippi".

Even though I do not love everything about Comcast by any means, I have always gotten decent or better customer service from them - and never in a foreign country or someone with a language problem.

My grandparents came from Germany on one side and Appalachia on the other. I think I was more hampered by the country twang of the grandparents who raised me. When I began to read and to watch television I lost the use of most of my "hillbilly" English. There is an unspoken respect by most of us for "good English" and the use of poor English causes most people to look down on a person, their upbringing, and their education. Sometimes that is fair and sometimes it is unfair. My grandparents were good, hard working, not rich people. I am surprised that after a few generations we don't all speak pretty near the same. (Did you notice the usage of "pretty near"?


Buy ya books and buy ya books. lol.


And...Blue Ash. MOST of us don't have to go too far back to find our ancestors from another country. I don't understand the point of the post. You cannot teach or legislate respect for one another. It has to be earned.

Here's what I think. (I could be wrong.) I think the point of BlueAsh's post was that not everyone who ever came to America could learn English, back before the borders were tightened and immigration was encouraged and so many adults came over from other countries. Further, I think he was pointing out that the large numbers of American expats living in foreign countries (Mexico, for example) do not go to the trouble of immersing themselves in the country's language either, because Mexicans feel that if you're going to live in Mexico, speak Spanish. So he was speaking to the posters who feel that no matter what, if you're going to live in America, you must learn English, and America should do nothing to accommodate them.

Further, I agree with BlueAsh that a century ago most immigrants' jobs were blue-collar jobs, people came over and formed communities with their compatriots, and the learning of English wasn't that important. It's their children who learned English, and I think that is happening with the foreigners who are living here in America presently.

We just have to wait a bit, the children will grow up, and nobody will have to listen to "Marque nueve por Espanol." Not that it bothers me--it doesn't.

It is DAMN hard for an adult to become fluent in a foreign language if he hasn't started learning it as a youth. Even with my gazillion years of French, the train schedule & ticket buying web site in France brought me to my knees. Fortunately, if you showed up at the station, they would give you a refund for the error you made online.

I would hate to be a foreigner and have to fill out forms in a different language, especially if you were not affluent enough to have a computer, the internet, and Google Translate.

Buggyone,
Glad that you were able to get a person who was from the US. I wish all of the Comcast service representatives were. The folks from India, Columbia, Mexico that monitor the service requests do not all understand what is said to them and fumble over their scripts.

Yesterday, our entire neighborhood of four streets.......Claverton, Kincord, Abbey and Triggerfish were without phone service, Internet and cable TV from Comcast from noon until all service was restored by nine that evening. Many of us had a difficult time getting through on our cell phones to report the outage. Even though it was widespread, the representatives had us jumping through hoops pulling plugs to reboot modems in our homes IGNORING our observation that it was not just our individual houses. They went as far as to schedule appointments with each of us for Wednesday or Thursday.

This morning........
We received a follow up phone call (on our restored land line phone) asking us about the service we received and if the problem was fixed. We were told that even though we reported that an entire neighborhood was out, they needed 6-7 people to call them and report the problem before they would look into it as being a bigger problem then one house.

Really???? If one person calls to report a house fire, does the fire department take his/her word or wait for 6-7 people to call to report the problem before they take action?

Comcast needs to update their outage reporting system and use technology to monitor when many houses are out at the same time. Having representatives babble their way through a SCRIPT and not UNDERSTAND what the customer is tellng them is not good customer service.

I fully understand the frustration Marigold is having with the level of non service. Last time I noticed my entire Comcast (telephone, cable, and internet) went down, I got on my cellphone, called 800COMCAST, and when I pressed 1 for trouble with service, a recorded message said there was a service interruption in my neighborhood and should be restored at (an exact time). It was all up and running within 1 hour AND they gave me a $20 credit for my trouble.

As I said, not once has Comcast sent my calls to a foreign call center.

I have had my calls sent "off shore". But for the most part have had ok service from Comcast. Not better or worse than from any company of the same size.

Btw, I have an English speaking friend who worked for ATT and got reprimanded for going "off script" even though she solved the customers problem. It seems all customer service reps must follow a script rather than use their own brain and reasoning skills. Go figure!