ErkkilaDotOrg

It’s a real shame when Nigerian scammers take over a service that is legitimately necessary for others.

We have a friend from work who’s deaf and who recently had to resort to having me call Dell for him in order to straighten out an order. Their TTY line had a pseudo-IVR that ended up forwarding him to a line that disconnected. When he tried the relay service, as soon as they found out it was relay they forwarded him to a number that wouldn’t answer. Apparently Dell’s email and online chat for customer service weren’t of much use, either. But have a hearing person call, and all of a sudden it’s a quick thing that only takes a few minute to fix…and that’s with me giving them delayed answers as I typed in irc to act as relay! Apparently they didn’t have a problem with me, a female caller, dealing with an account with a male name on it and giving them delayed answers to questions like ‘what name is on the credit card’, AND having it shipped to a different address (relatives of our friend), but if I had said the word ‘relay’ it would have been game over! Thank goodness they *did* accept me as a don’t-ask-don’t-tell relay operator or I don’t know how he would’ve gotten through. I was happy to do this, but it’s pretty lame that Dell made it necessary.

Trackback This Post | Subscribe to the comments through RSS Feed