I've notice this on several customer support phone calls...AT&T, Amazon and a few others..

It seems they are processing the voices through some sort of electronic synthesizer or some such, I'm guessing to mitigate the foreign accents. They all sound like they are talking with a lisp.

Anyone else notice this?

Yeth.

Yes. There doesn’t appear to be any background sounds too.
Oddly, it happened with a tech support person. He was excellent in working through the issue.
When I asked him, he admitted he was using the device. That it made his job easier.

Are you certain it’s not the fact that you’re speaking to someone 8,000 miles away at a call center in India? Why would they feel the need to disguise accents?

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
Are you certain it’s not the fact that you’re speaking to someone 8,000 miles away at a call center in India? Why would they feel the need to disguise accents?

I don't believe what I'm hearing is an Indian accent from a distant location, but rather a digitally altered voice. As to why they would do that, well a very thick accent is difficult for some US folks to understand and a lot of people are put off by the idea that such services are outsourced.

^^^^^^^^^^
Even with a digitally altered voice the syntax and grammar are dead giveaways. Verbal expressions such as straightaway are more clues.