[chris1]

I had a similiar experience with HP. I had a person from india trying to help me out with a problem. not only was this person impossible to understand, but he was RUDE! Can you believe it? I was pissed off beyond all heck and imagine many others have had the same experience as myself.

[Enterprise]

It has to be irritating to say the very least. Probably just as bad as getting a telemarketer call from India or Pakistan.

[Ramcat]

I've had the same experience with call centers in CA and TX (heavy asian and latino accents)but at least these people are helping to support our economy.

[auggy]

"I was pissed off beyond all heck and imagine many others have had the same experience as myself."

Yep!

I know I have had ,at least 3 times, talked to a thick accented person. They very well could have been Iranian or Iraqi's.

Usually, one spends more, to have this telephone support. I will never do it again.

[giotto]

The customer service personnel at American Express are, I believe, Indian, and they are polite and smart. Frankly, I'd rather deal with a sharp, decently educated Indian or Asian than a bratty, ignorant, dull-witted, government-school educated American.

[Fury]

I had a similiar experience with HP. I had a person from india trying to help me out with a problem. not only was this person impossible to understand, but he was RUDE! Can you believe it? I was pissed off beyond all heck and imagine many others have had the same experience as myself.

We moved support for some of our network hardware from a company that was outsourcing the support out of the country(rude, arrogant, such a thick accent that it was hard to understand some folks, etc.) to a local company in Western New York. We actually get more for our dollar (on-site visits if needed) for a bit less in total cost. The local company is hungry and they have our business for at least the next 2 years...

[Williams]

In my case, the Compaq (read HP also) people actually started transferring me around because I asked to speak to a manager. They pretended I was transferred to the parts dept. and did I want to order any parts. When I started yelling at them they all burst out laughing. Now get this, I finally get a manager and they are trying to figure out who did this. While I'm on the phone trying to fix my computer with the new tech they give me, the other guys are actually calling me back on my other line (at 2 AM) and threatening me for being rude to them. Meanwhile, the manager is trying to track them down, supposedly to fire them. And they never fixed the problem. It was a totally simple setting that needed to be changed and these guys had caused me to spend mucho $$ and hours for nothing.

[L.N. Smithee]

I had a similiar experience with HP. I had a person from india trying to help me out with a problem. not only was this person impossible to understand, but he was RUDE! Can you believe it? I was pissed off beyond all heck and imagine many others have had the same experience as myself.

Me too. I am sure that on a regular basis, they are asked "Can I speak to someone who speaks English?" and have developed an attitude.

Just this past weekend, I couldn't boot up my Dell PC. I called customer support Friday night, and got a guy in Canada. I thought I lucked out -- and then he told me that support for my computer is actually handled by operators at another number. As soon as I heard that, I knew that in a matter of minutes, a guy from India would pick up the phone. Tiring of trying to explain my situation to him and not wanting to disassemble my computer at a quarter to midnight, I politely told him I would call the number the next morning.

Saturday, I talked to an operator from Texas who pretty much told me to do the same thing over and over and over and over for about an hour, and finally, he asked me to exchange the additional hard drive I installed recently as the boot drive. Not having installed Windows on the second drive, it couldn't boot up, but it would have if WinXP was installed. He recommended that I use a boot disk to start the PC with the second drive, then install XP on the second drive -- and that would be the only way that I could guarantee the survival of the 40GB hard drive. I asked him what had happened, and he said that hard drives just malfunction. Noting that the drive in question had been manufactured in August 2001, I asked him if this was something that should happen to a drive so young. He said "it does happen."

I asked him, "Do you want to go on record as saying that it's not abnormal for a hard drive installed in a Dell computer to give out after two years?"

There was a long pause, and finally said, "No."

Not relishing the idea of several more hours of trial-and-error tinkering, I tried to start it up with the original boot drive one more time. It worked.

I have called Dell techs about seven times since purchasing my first computer in 1996. Only twice have they been 100% correct. If there was an affordable computer with a better track record, I would buy one -- but there doesn't seem to be one.