[reagan_fanatic]

Estrich is a liberal hag, but she's 100% dead-on here. I've had the misfortune of dealing with outsourced technical help (that also was in India) for my cell phone, and it was an absolute frickin nightmare. I had to repeat everything I said 2-3 times, and it was obvious the guy was just reading from cue cards and had no clue as to what he was really doing.

I almost hung up the phone in disgust.

[Gorzaloon]

My experiences with offshore call centers has been mixed.

One of the failures involved a call center making sales solicitations for a data service. I moved into the office of someone who left, and was getting these calls from one regularly.

"Hello! Smith John?"

"No, over here as say it the other way..You know, like 'Ravinda Gupta'- Look, the person is gone. Stop calling me."

This went on for a few months, and my patience began eroding. My replies became shorter and angrier.

The one that finally stopped it all was

"He is GONE! it was HORRIBLE!!!"

"What do you mean?"

"He got his dog pregnant, and then ran away with a truck driver!!!"

Over the phone there was stunned silence, with the unspoken icon "This program has performed an illegal function and will now close."

[woodbutcher1963]

This happened to me with Ameriprise Financial(formerly American Express) regarding a sale of a mutual fund I was going to sell. I was speaking to a call center in Manilla , Phillipines.
I promptly asked to be transferred to a representative at their corporate office in Minneapolis. I then read this person the riot act about speaking to anyone regarding an acct. with over $100K in it with a person in a foreign country that could barely speak English. I then threaten to move my assets to Fidelity.
I am not sure it did any good , but I felt better.

Also, try a CITI Platinum Select Master Card. I get 5% back on all purchases for gasoline, grocery stores and drug stores. I get 1% on all other purchases up to $300 anually. All I do is call up their 800 # and they send me a CHECK.