This ought to hit home for most of you. Customer Support Call Centers! Just where the heck are they?

Well, I had an interesting experience today with Belkin’s out-sourced call center(s). First, the fella answering the phone (each time a different person) claimed to be “Ken” from Virginia. Ken, huh? From Virginia? Suuurrree he is. Odd accent they have in Virginia these days. Almost has a middle-eastern twang to it.

Well, aside from this guy outright lying to me about his whereabouts, he proceeds to ask me questions straight from his script (err, book maybe) that have no relevance to my issue (the darn usb adapter refuses to work without having to repeatedly uninstall it and then reinstall it again) of continually having little to no internet access.

After telling “Ken” that if we cannot remedy this situation of installing/uninstalling/installing their software to attempt to get the adapter to work, I’m going to take it back to the place of purchase and buy from their competitor. “Ken” then proceeds to hang up on me. Yup, he hung up on me. I didn’t even have a chance to cuss him yet so this was odd behavior for a so-called customer service professional.

To be honest, I was hung up on twice and when the third call occurred and I asked immediately to speak to a superviser, I was disconnected. Now that’s real professional there, isn’t it?

I figured I’d go ahead and write them (ie: email them) about what I thought of their so-called customer service and refer them to what happened to Dell seeing as they seemed to be going down that same road with outsourcing customer service. My email to them is below:

To Whom It May Concern,

I purchased the above mentioned usb network adapter to access the internet on my desktop by way of one of your routers. The router performs flawlessly so far. However, the adapter does not.

I have repeatedly had to reinstall the software and configuring the adapter to get it to work. This is unacceptable in itself but the more perplexing issue is that of your overseas call center(s).

Today for example, I contacted Support three (3) times concerning this issue. Twice I was hung up on and the third time I was disconnected when waiting on a supervisor to pick up.

To be hung up on is bad enough and shows very unprofessional behavior but to be told I’m speaking to “Ken” or “Roger” for example, all the while attempting to fool me into thinking I’m speaking to someone here in the U.S. is ludicrous at best. The accent obviously gives this away.

I’m fully aware that “Ken” could care less whether my adapter will work or not but this type of outsourcing is why people will turn away from your company. We’re not fools nor are we complacent to allow this type behavior to be an allowed norm for doing business with a company…large or small.

I have managed to get your device to work once again. If it fails once more, it will go back to the place of purchase and will not be thought of again. I’ll look to one of your competitors first. Plus, I’ll be sure to tell anyone I know that Belkin uses outsourcing for their customer support and that said outsourcing is very unprofessional, discourteous and an outright fraud in that they misrepresent themselves to be someone they aren’t.

My advice to you would be to clean house in your customer support departments or suffer the problems that Dell did before they brought their customer support back “in-house”.

You’ll note that I behaved myself in a professional manner and in no way used foul language nor anything of that nature. Want to bet on whether I get a response other than a canned one? Or even a response of any kind?

Well to date, not one word from Belkin and the router and adapter both went back to the store. I reinstalled my old Linksys wireless router and ran cable to my desktop. Issue resolved. Linksys in…Belkin out.