Posted on 04/16/2026 9:21:17 AM PDT by Dr. Sivana
I was never one to make a big deal out of call center prompts that state "Press 1 for English ... blah blah blah Espanol". My assumption was that a large company wants to be able to assist customers by being able to communicate with them. So in a room with 20 operators, maybe 15 would be native English speakers, and five would be native Spanish speakers. That used to be the case.
Not any more. My wife had to call Capital One. She selected English, and the person on the other end could barely speak English, and had a heavy Spanish accent. The communication was non-existent. My wife got transferred to someone who was better, but could only barely communicate in English. So I figured, Capital One hired a lot of people who do not speak English well, for the purpose of answering phone calls in English ... nlt a good idea.
Today, I had to call Lycamobile (a cell phone carrier). I had a similar experience. She was asking me to talk slower and louder (I naturally have a very loud voice). Her own Spanish accent was thick enough that we both had to repeat constantly.
We were both frustrated.
I have now come to a new conclusion: they are NOPT hiring 15 English speakers and five Spanish speakers. They are hiring 20 Spanish speakers who claim to be bilingual, and who ever does the hiring (possibly also a Spanish-first speaker) figures, close enough.
I had enough of a problem with the Indian call centers. This is just very frustrating.
The other possibility is that calls from my state of Arizona are being routed to Spanish heavy call centers on the assumption that I would be okay with it.
I have been in Arizona for eight years, and have not picked up any Spanish. I know cerveza and raspadillos and manana, and that's about it.
They may not seem to speak it, but - - -
They understand English (and our dialects) very well.
And their mumbling leads us to assume what they are saying.
And we give up information based on that, what we think they mean.
And they follow up and encourage . . .
Just say “please cancel my service immediately.” Repeat that a few times with variation like I want to cancel service”. I’m a senior who is being abused by your answer…”. You will get a real person. For me, it has never failed.
Our hospital farmed out medical conversations to India to put to text.
They did NOT get the medical inuenco of any of that.
BAD results.
Sometimes I get the feeling that the reason it is so hard to get a “Customer Service” person that is able to communicate well with consumers is because they WANT to frustrate you, make you give up trying to get things fixed, and just live with the problem.
Today I hung up on a Humana representative. I don’t know what language she was jibber-jabbering in but I couldn’t understand her.
Almost worse is the (probable) fact is that THEY don’t understand YOU. Not cool when you’re dealing with healthcare issues.
And you can’t go anywhere else; pretty much ALL companies are doing this.
Surprisingly, the one organization I dealt with a few times over the last month was the Passport office when one of our renewal Passports never was delivered. All of them were polite, aggressive to help you, and spoke perfect English. Yay Trump!
“Worse than that, however, was calling State Farm, ... having the same problem.”
You probably got Black Jake. (We changed companies when white Jake became black Jake.) Enough already!
That Tagalog click-clacking makes me CRAZY!
Several Dilbert cartoons on that!
The was an anecdote about the training imposed by the studio that hired Ava Gardner. Her (South Carolina ?) accent was so thick that people from the next county couldn’t understand her or people from her own county.
Discover Financial (The Discover CC & Discover Bank) has very good domestic customer service...always very friendly/competent/understandable. Discover Financial is merging with Capitol One, hopefully they keep the Discover CS and ditch the offshore Capitol One CS. We’ll see I guess.
Here is a job interview conducted by “Pluto” (ChatGPT ?). The interviewee messes with the AI, and asks it to speak in the language of a fox. And then to translate that into French, starting at 1:13. And that’s not even getting into the drivel of the business buzzwords used :
https://youtube.com/watch?v=IJ9npjmTIo8
“You can spot a Filipino accent by the elongation of the R in “sir”.”
I lived in the Philippines for a total of seven years. Back in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. Manila and Cagayan de Oro. The Philippines ROCK!
When speaking English Filipinos pronounce their F’s like P’s.
This gets you to the following statement :
What is a pair of pliers?
Two Filipino astronauts.
How long did it take your hospital to resolve that issue?
Ha! He got it to speak in Fox and Morse Code. Funny... but depressing at the same time.
An AI Bot texted me when I submitted a job application. I wondered whether the Bot would interview me, too, but my application never made it to that stage.
I will remember that!
-SB
We fixed the Indian problem by teaching them to speak Southern. Turn the word “stop it” into 4 syllables.
Discover Bank always prided itself on its “award-winning” 24/7 U.S.-based customer service. Capital One bought it last year. I hope it keeps the U.S. customer service, too.
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