I spoke to 3 different customer service reps in Australia when I Skyped the Australian customer service telephone number. The first two had incredible accents that I had difficulty understanding. They both seemed to be reading from some script (in a book perhaps??) because their suggestions seemed ludicrous - such as suggesting that I re-boot my modem.

The last (of the three) understood when I walked him through the issue. He was really interested in solving the issue. He actually got me to approve his accessing my Big Shot account with my username AND password. When he could not access my account, he finally realized the seriousness of the situation - and that was after he was able to access HIS OWN account - but not mine!

So, the bottom line, to me, is that the first two CS reps (who were not totally fluent in English - and I make that judgement from their limited understanding of the problem and their strong accents AND their inability to do any actual trouble-shooting in real time conversation) were unable to help me. The final CS rep who was totally fluent (because of his ability to do trouble-shooting in rel time) actually did help me.

Your comment of Malaysians and Singaporeans makes me wonder why you seem upset about me insinuating that these two nationalities are less than capable. I MADE NO REFERENCE to either nationalities. Why are you indicating them out of all nationalities that have asian accents? I repeat that I made no comment about Malaysian nor Singaporean nationalities.

I repeat that I spoke to CS reps at the Australian CS contact number. I assume the people answering there are legally entitled to work in Australia. I have no idea what country they came from. You are making assumptions about my comment about accents. All I am saying is that they were LESS FLUENT than the 3rd CS rep who spoke with NO accent (I could understand him without asking for him to repeat anything during the over 30 minute long conversation - unlike my repeated requests for clarification with the first 2 heavily accented CS reps)). In addition (as I have already mentioned) he was fluent enough to ask me probing questions and do problem solving and then make internal (internal to Air Asia) inquiries and to indentify and problem and to make a service request to IT to solve the issue. Then he was able to explain WHY I could not get any information from IT as to when the problem would be solved.

In my past East and SE Asia travels (since 1971) I have experienced countless situations where folks indicate they speak and understand English, BUT I quickly have discovered they they really did NOT understand. They said they understood English, but at what level?? Not basic inquiry and discussion as they could not even give explanations about which bus to take or how far I had to walk - as in 5 km, or 1 km, and in which direction???

I am currently in a teaching (Maths/Physics/Chemistry) MENA situation where the lack of English skills hampers student learning of the subject material. Some of my students simply do NOT understand what the English words mean - but they understand what the Arabic equivalents mean. Saw the same thing when I was doing a CELTA program over a year ago in SE Asia. English is NOT the primary language of communication is SE Asia and fluency is not as good (usually) as in places where students take a LOT of instruction in English speaking schools and then speak a LOT of english in a totally English environment. Reading the forums on www.eslcafe.com will indicate to anyone the frustrations ESL teachers have in an environment where English is NOT the primary language, and where students simply have difficulty with English.

Perhaps this explanation does explain my comment. Maybe not?? Time to move on to another thread as the 3rd (and fluent in English) CS rep helped solve the problem for me. The problem for me has been solved and if I need to deal, in the future, with CS reps who are less than fluent, THEN I will deal with it....