Dell Computer Corporation has decided to outsource its technical support to India. I like Dell. They are more expensive than other computers out there but they will custom build the computer you want, and the quality is better than most. But more than anything else, I liked the fact that I could pick up the phone and talk to them if I had a problem. Sometime since I purchased this newest baby a little under two years ago and about six months ago, Dell decided to move most of its technical support services to New Delhi, India. Every time I call them, the communication is very difficult. Number one, its just hard to understand what they are saying most of the time. and number two, they aren't over here in America, so I notice that no matter what I call them for, sure as hell, within five minutes they are telling me that “Mr. Fishy, we are going to have to reformat your hard drive. Do you have your install discs available?” I'm like, “You're what? You’re not going to reformat my hard drive. Are you high or something?” “Pardon me Mr. Fishy?” “Listen man, please stop with your re-format your hard drive talk and lets fix this problem. O.K.? If you cannot fix it, then I totally understand. Please just tell me that and lets talk to someone who can fix it... like someone in America... but no you're not going to delete everything off of my system just because you cannot get the wireless to work all of a sudden, unless you plan on coming here yourself and re-installing everything for me. and let me tell you, there's a lot installed on my system so be prepared to stay for a while.” sure enough, eventually they come back and find a way to solve the issue, or they get someone on the phone who can, and its always usually something pretty simple. Just goes to show.   

Another problem is that you cannot just chat with the Indians about your issue. They just don't chat. Over here in the states you find a tech support person on the phone, you describe your problem, they look it up, they share with you their own experience with this issue, you share with them things that you know, you learn some, they learn some, and between the two of you, the problem is solved in no time flat. With the Indian tech support people, there is no chatting. They are like robots. They don't have any experience with what you are calling them about. they probably have been on the job for less than a week. they can’t talk to you about it because they don't know anything about it. They have to look everything up in their manual. Its just crazy. its not the kind of tech support we are used to here in the states. 

As I type this I am on the phone with one of the Dell Indians just this very minute. Explaining to him how sometimes I cannot get the keys 8, I, k, and the comma to work properly. Now all of a sudden I can. its crazy. its like the keyboard on this thing is fucking haunted... Their style of communication is completely different from ours. they will take five minutes to say one sentence when we already know what they are going to say. In America we don't have time for that. in America we are all used to a certain communication style with one another that is very quick and fast paced and focused on results, stepping over each others sentences, jumping to the point, leaving behind all the formalities in order to just solve the problem and move on. These Indians don't understand this. I ask one question and he starts all the way back at the beginning of the story again. I try to interrupt him and tell him to just please get to the point. Just answer my question. Please don't explain this same thing to me again for the twentieth time. he doesn’t understand why I am acting this way towards him. he doesn’t realize that I am in America. I am an American in America. I am in an office. An American office. I can look on the timer on my Japanese made phone and plainly see that I have been on the phone with him for twenty three minutes already and he hasn’t accomplished a damn thing except frustrating me. the same thing happened to us last week when my accountant and I were trying to call customer service for American Express. What should have taken five minutes took almost five hours. They too have decided to start opening up customer service centers in India, this time in Bombay. Same thing. after talking to five different reps over a period of two hours my accountant was so agitated that he was literally screaming at the reps at this point. I'm talking screaming. I could hear his blood boiling through the phone line. “Look you, if you repeat yourself one more time I am going to fly to fucking Bombay and ring your fucking neck. Do you understand me? Now please! Transfer us to someone there that can give us the accurate information we are clearly asking for. Please!” total silence. And then this meek and fragile Indian accented voice slowly... “there is no need to get hostile Mr. Helfer. I am only trying to help you.” it was a mess. A mess because American Express has decided to try outsourcing its customer service to India. And its failing miserably. Still on the phone with Dell tech support and he still cannot help me with my issue. I am bored typing this. I want to do something else. Its now 44 minutes later and I have just hung up. I said thank you and I said goodbye but I didn't wait to hear what this babbling Indian was saying. I couldn’t bare the pain anymore. If I wanted that I would have bought an Indian computer. I called dell customer service and sales. Of course they are in America. I chatted with the lady there. I told her that I was taking time out of my own busy schedule to lodge this complaint with her so she could give it to whoever these things go to so dell moves tech support back to America. She told me that she gets these calls all day and that she believes they will do just that within six months. She shares with me that tech support in India, at least for Dell, is just not working. Especially now when so many Americans are out of work and complaining that all of our jobs are going to other countries. I just said that to be really really honest, as an American, I don't like calling tech support or customer service for something that I supposedly bought from an American company and then talking to someone in some other country half way around the world about it. I want to talk to someone in jersey or the Carolinas or in Wisconsin or Michigan or California. I don't know why. I'm not sure exactly why, but I would just feel better about it. Go figure. She agreed. we contemplated how long it would be before she herself would get the boot and be told that her job too was moving to Bombay or New Delhi. We laughed. We said goodbye and I was happy that I could still pick up the phone and speak with someone in America from one of these large companies. But for the last five minutes I have been looking out this seventh floor window at the tops of many people’s houses and condos and apartments and at the palm trees and a beautiful vista of the ocean and I've been thinking about the implications of what we’re seeing with all these companies continuing to lay people off and move hundreds of thousands and even millions of jobs to India or Mexico or some other country. and what I could see is a future that didn't look so bright for us here in America. a country where there were few people who were very very rich because they were owners or CEOs or presidents of large companies, and there were millions and millions of people who were very very poor because all the middle class jobs moved somewhere else where it was much cheaper to hire for them. we knew it was happening with manufacturing. We watched it happen. and we let it happen. but now that it is happening with service jobs, and with big companies like Sony and Dell and American Express (American) you ponder it for a few minutes and you start realizing that just about any job could go the way of some other country. and little by little, more and more Americans are suddenly out of work. Not only are they out of work, they are out of a profession. It could to them at any age, no matter where they are in their career. You start thinking that maybe they only kind of jobs that might hold any amount of job security would be professional jobs such as being a lawyer or an accountant or a doctor or a journalist or something. what scares me about it is what's going to happen to all these people who lose their jobs? I mean, right now, what is happening to them? what are they doing? I don't like thinking about it. it can make you sad. When I talk to other people about it, they assure me that as has always been the case, new industries will form and new jobs will develop out there in the Wild West that America has always been. So that's what people have to focus on. Be positive. Keep focusing on innovation and let the old tired used up jobs go to the poorer nations. Man wasn't it just yesterday that they were telling people that tech support was just that? the new hot job market. Fascinating stuff.

Current Spin: Volcano by Edie Brickel. Finally after ten years!