I'd pay $50 more for NOT talking to India!

Intersting article:

ell sending some jobs back to U.S.
Corporate customer complaints prompt the change

http://www.statesman.com/business/content/auto/epaper/editions/saturday/business_f3fb91a6d56421360070.html

 

Spoke to a very senior economist and a guy who owns an outsourcing company about this yesterday--the economist used to lecture at Harvard. His take on it was, if you believe in free, unfettered trade, then things will gravitate to lowest cost producer. Each country will produce what it produces most effiiciently, and this is best for the economy as a whole ie. consumers get all goods and services at lowest possible cost. The outsourcing guru said that the IT industry in the US is in shock because it was never anticipated that service sector jobs could be moved so easily. Technology has allowed it to happen.

Both were in agremeent that protectionism would be a bad thing. Both also said that in the short run, it would help India's economy, to the detriment (more like devastation) of the US IT sector.

 

Interesting indeed. A few months ago, the company I'm currently working for (you know, the paycheck day job doing IT work?) has a Premiere account. The tech support doesn't go through India anymore. It goes to a small tech center here in the states, actually in Round Rock, where I once worked in the 'bastard child' of Dell at one time.

It is good to hear that Dell is at least listening to its business customers, but hopefully they'll listen to their customers even more. Those tech support PC World awards don't mean jack anymore to their bottomline.

As I see it - in the next few years, the "buy american" mottos will return to a greater extent in keeping funds over here.

 

another DELL thread: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,103955,00.html

As to world economy/free trade, do these economists believe that a lower priced labor market in the 3rd world will lower the price of cars or houses or medical care in America?

Who cares if Patel can now afford to buy Marlboros' by the case and Coke by the gallon if Americans can barely afford a single wide in Tornado alley? You don't buy $25 - $50k cars, $250k houses, Plasma TVs, computers, cell phones and all the other toys America has come to enjoy working at the only jobs left in America (that haven't already been taken by illegal aliens or those on 'special' work permits).

My question to the Ivy League economists: with all but limited manufacturing jobs gone, and now any job that can be done by phone going - just where, exactly, are we going to find/create high paying jobs?

What new job sector out there is going to allow 5-15 million Americans to keep their houses, cars, medical benefits, vacations, retirement or the quality of life we have come to expect in exchange for a lifetime of hard work?

Or are we to become one of those semi-impoverished nations that rely on tourist dollars to survive....look at what happened to our economy in the aftermath of Sept 11th. Millions of American CHOSE not to travel for safety reasond for a short time causing major economic disruptions to tourist based economies i.e Las Vegas, New York etc.

Now imagine the economic effect of millions becomming permanantly un- or underemployed, where travel is no longer option...

 

Don't know if you are just ranting/venting or really asking such dumb questions...

 

TVR Freak,

Mark G's observations are dead on. Why are you so pompous?

 

Micheal Dell could care less if you were pissed off, all he cares about is making more money, heck it costs 23 dollars to build a Dell computer, and hes charging 100x that to some ppl. ITs been happening for decades, but now you get to talk to the foreign person instead of using what they made.


Oopps, forgot to say SONYs customer service is far the worst Ive had to deal with hands down.

 

Dell to Stop Using Tech Support in India

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Ahh, the monthly sky if falling big business is evil F-chat thread.

It would be funny if some of the comments weren't so ignorant.

 

There's a very fine line between honesty and ignorance in a situation like this. It seems like if you even say you can't understand an Indian/Oriental person's accent, you're automatically racist. In all the letters, feedback, etc that I've sent to Dell, I try and keep this in mind and use the most PC wording I can.

IMO, the fact of the matter is, when customer support is outsourced to another country where English is not the native language (whatever country that may be), there are going to be language barriers. Sure, I've had help from Indian CS reps who have been helpful. I wish I could say it wasn't the exception though. It's not a generalization; it's a fact, based on my personally talking to probably 50-100 Dell customer service reps in the past year.