Some five years ago, I purchased a Dell Dimension 5100 Desktop. At that time I also purchased the Extended Software and Hardware Warranties. As many programs were added, along with a second hard drive and 1gb of memory, all went well for approximately three years.
The first problem I had related to a software error while attempting to install a new Epson scanner. I had already spoken to Tech Support at Epson, who claimed this was a Dell problem. During the first call to Dell, I reached an Indian call center, with an agent spoke in such broken English, that I was only able to decipher about 25% of what he was saying. What I do remember from that call, is that the agent kept leaving the phone form minutes at a time, and then would vainly repeat the same procedure. Eventually, he stated that I would have to Purchase another 1gb of memory, since the current configuration was simply too small to handle the requirements of the errant driver.
Not willing to accept such nonsense, I called again, this time reaching a all center in the Philippines. After a marathon nine hour session, the agent was able to partially get the program operation, requiring that I open from the Control Panel, rather than the desktop shortcut.
Two other problems were successfully fixed, after long and tortuous periods on the phone.
Then, a major problem developed, having to do with an error which displayed an unwanted dialog box, each time a program was opened. Again, after messing around for several hours the solution, offered in broken English was to format, and reinstall XP. With many free, non retrievable programs, and a whole cluster of drivers, this was not a choice I was willing to make, without further exploration of alternatives.
In the end, what I have been forced to do is to turn to a friend who is professionally employed a a Systems Administrator.in each case, he remotely took over the computer, and fixed the problem,
Beyond the facts that these idiot agents lack sufficient mastery of the English language to either understand or communicate with customers, have less than a clue about solving the problems that they are charged to fix, are so ignorant of their own lack of knowledge that they cannot admit they spend hours wasting the customers time, and worst of all, have the nerve to charge $49.00 for each time they attempt to solve a problem.in terms of PR, it seems to me as it has every time I have dealt with outsourced support, regardless of company, that the savings the company gets in reduced workforce costs is far overridden by the cost of customer disgust.
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