Indian Call Center Guy

While I am in the DC/Baltimore area I am staying with my friend Preethy.  She is an American, although both of her parents are originally from India.   These facts, and many more, were the subject of intense interest to the man on the other end of the Comcast tech support call.

The problem was, I wanted to use her internet connection.  My laptop kept telling me that the network key was wrong, or that there was signal interference, or just basically that it was not going to connect.  Preethy, being the extremely gracious hostess that she is, decided to call Comcast to see if they could assist me.  If you were at MY house and you could not get on my internet for some reason, I would tell you “Ha ha ha, oh well,” so you can see that Preethy is much nicer than I am.

So she called Comcast and asked for technical support.  This, of course, sent the call to India, where a very friendly gentleman answered and expressed his deep sympathy and sorrow in regards to our computing problems.  The first thing he did was ask for the name of the person he was speaking to.  This was Preethy’s first mistake, because she said “Preethy” instead of “Sallie Mae” or “Betsy.”

“Ooh, can I call you by your first name for the remainder of this call?” he asked, with a hint of schoolboy wonder in his voice.  Preethy said that would be ok, and then he actually asked a few questions about the internet connection, like was it working or not, and if not, why not?  When we told him it just said “error” he put us on hold to go speak to his supervisor.  When he came back, he asked us to go to the site with the connection properties on it, so we could confirm we had the correct passkey and whatnot.

The site was taking a long time to load, so for a minute or two there was silence on the phone.  Then, out of nowhere, we heard “So, what are you doing?”  Thank goodness Preethy had put it on speaker phone or her husband Bob and I would have missed all the awkward hilarity that was to follow.

“I’m just doing what you told me to do.  Waiting for the page to load,” Preethy responded, misunderstanding what he was really asking.

“No, what are you doing tonight?  Do you have any big plans for Christmas holidays?” he asked.

“Ummmm, what?” said Preethy.

“So are you from another country?” he continued.  “I mean, I know you are American, but are you also from somewhere else?”

Preethy sighed, and told him what he wanted to know.  She explained that her parents were from India, and of course he wanted to know what part, and OMG, he was in that very part RIGHT NOW!  And then Preethy made the fatal error of telling him that she was going to be visiting India in January.  Meanwhile, I was still not on the internet.

I forget what they were talking about at the point that Bob took the phone and told the guy that we did not need his help anymore.  The page never loaded, and my laptop is still not on the internet.  Although I guess if I need more help I can always call that guy back in India, because he gave us a special number to reach him at if we need anything else, anything else at all.  My final review of Comcast Tech Support is: Effectiveness – F, Extra Friendliness – A+