Headscratcher (7)

After twenty five minutes of frustration, your correspondent has just given up trying to get help from one of Symantec's call centers.

The first step was to listen to, but only understand less than half of what an Indian customer service (customer service?) representative, with an incomprehensible accent, was saying. The second step was to wait to speak to a supervisor whose accent was only marginally easier to understand. That was followed by another wait to be transferred to a technical expert who, after listening to the problem description, stated that he was not trained to address Internet related problems.

This episode is a clear example of the old adage that you don't always get what you pay for but you rarely get more.

Why, then, do companies think that outsourcing their call centers to India is good business? Money - perhaps substantial amounts - is saved in the short term but, frequently, the long term result is to alienate their [about to be former] customers.

Or are these companies so arrogant that they actually believe that their customers have no alternatives?

A headscratcher indeed.