Technology is so wonderful in so many ways but especially in the "online chat with customer

[abqtommy]

service"! Yes, it is possible to be extremely frazzled and frustrated in the comfort of your own home!

In the last week I've had two of these experiences with positive outcomes and never had to leave the
comfort of my own home or my favorite chair sitting here in front of my computer monitor. One
experience involved chatting with a person who was obviously located here in the U.S. while the
other was definitely not. Nevertheless, my persistence and patience paid off.

I wish you all similar success!

[Kali]

1. some are ok some not

I do NOT recommend verizon chat for getting any kind of help.

[wcmagumba]

2. I have had the following "phone" tech experience the last week...

Getting 8 to 10 calls a day from a local area code number (in the US) with no messages left. I don't answer these kind of calls unless they leave a message and it is someone I know or a company/physician's office I need to speak to...Tried the basic google search of the number and it showed a small town 30 or so miles away, knew there were likely no reputable business call centers in that town...I finally called the number and it was medicare something something and clearly was a spoofed number from outside the area. I am medicare eligible at the end of the year but wanted these calls stopped...the first operator said they would stop but would give no additional information without my giving them more personal information and hung up on me...(I wasn't abusive or angry) I called back three more times and got the same response, I asked the name of the insurer they worked for all three times and they immediately hung up on me...crazy, harassment (imo, I had not given permission for these calls), Closest thing I could find on the net was Aetna, Humana and United Health (I think they are now the same companies)...I will look for other providers before signing up...I thought that spoofing local numbers like this was illegal...rant over....

[abqtommy]

5. I don't call these numbers back, I use a reverse-phone-number-lookup like

https://www.callreceived.com/phone/5052276337 Of course numbers on our Caller ID can be
spoofed for now but here in Albuquerque the police have a website where we can enter a criminal
complaint for abusive or fraudulent calls. I've used that several times and they have better resources
than I/we have.

[Skittles]

3. it is great when it works

I was able to order a new cell phone, transfer what was on my old one via App, and start the transfer process to move my number with one phone call. Never talked to anyone.

[unblock]

4. It's almost always all about the people and the training, not about the tech

I've had good interactions and bad, both in-person and online.

Good people, well-trained, make it a productive and pleasant experience. Otherwise it ranges from annoying to frustrating to disaster.

Worst I've had is an online poker site. I swear they train them to deliberately misunderstand or misinterpret what you're saying. I understand language issues and i don't really have a problem making allowances for them. But my experience went way beyond that.

One thing online chat does is it allows employers to think they can lower standards, because it can be a bit harder to determine if the customer service representative is incompetent without the obvious in-person body language.

But in truth, it's still pretty obvious if you have someone who is reasonably trained or not.