Blog: More Rhapsody, for Free
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More Rhapsody, for Free - Saturday, July 23, 2005
So my Real Rhapsody trial subscription was about to run out, but I had this problem where songs wouldn't burn, and thus I was to forfeit the $5 burn credit they gave me. I called customer support to cancel, and the first thing I noticed about the lady who picked up was that she had an Indian accent. She couldn't speak English very well, but after I explained my problem she extended my trial by a month(!!) so that I could have time to get the technical problem fixed. She forwarded me to tech support, and another Indian-accented woman picked up, her English 10 times as bad. By now I was convinced that the whole Rhapsody customer support center is located halfway around the globe in India. Maybe in a whole building complex rented by tech companies. Stupid job outsourcing.
So this woman would ask me some questions, and after I replied I would hear silence (except for the occasional beeping of office machines in the background) for a couple minutes. She would tell me to try something, and when I told her it didn't work, I'd hear nothing. Two minutes later she would come back and ask, "did it work?" Or in the middle of telling me something, she would trail off...
Finally she tried directing me to a webpage where I could upgrade my software, but she had to spell out each letter by the NATO Phonetic Alphabet. hotel ... tango ... tango ... papa - that spelled http. The whole link was about 40 characters long, and when I had transcribed it, it brought up an invalid page. I read it back to her twice (using my sad version of the phonetic alphabet) and she said it was all correct. Finally I asked if she could send me an email with the link... no reply. Two minutes later, "Sir, I'll email the link to you."
It turns out my version of the link had a few letters wrong and was missing a few letters... but at least the download went quickly and the problem was fixed. So thanks to 45 minutes on the phone with tech support <cough>, I have a free month of unlimited streaming music and $5 burning power. I've listened to over 1500 tracks in the past month, which amounts to over 100 CD's, so that's really not a bad deal.
In conclusion: Rhapsody = good. Outsourcing = bad.
So this woman would ask me some questions, and after I replied I would hear silence (except for the occasional beeping of office machines in the background) for a couple minutes. She would tell me to try something, and when I told her it didn't work, I'd hear nothing. Two minutes later she would come back and ask, "did it work?" Or in the middle of telling me something, she would trail off...
Finally she tried directing me to a webpage where I could upgrade my software, but she had to spell out each letter by the NATO Phonetic Alphabet. hotel ... tango ... tango ... papa - that spelled http. The whole link was about 40 characters long, and when I had transcribed it, it brought up an invalid page. I read it back to her twice (using my sad version of the phonetic alphabet) and she said it was all correct. Finally I asked if she could send me an email with the link... no reply. Two minutes later, "Sir, I'll email the link to you."
It turns out my version of the link had a few letters wrong and was missing a few letters... but at least the download went quickly and the problem was fixed. So thanks to 45 minutes on the phone with tech support <cough>, I have a free month of unlimited streaming music and $5 burning power. I've listened to over 1500 tracks in the past month, which amounts to over 100 CD's, so that's really not a bad deal.
In conclusion: Rhapsody = good. Outsourcing = bad.