It may be cheaper, but....
So it seems that every other company is "outsourcing" their tech support call centers to India. Yes, it may be cheaper for the companies, but it would really be nice if they actually screened the phone personnel for their understanding and PRONUNCIATION of English. It is dreadfully frustrating and annoying when you realize that the person on the other end of the phone has no idea what you're talking about, and you've spent 1/2 an hour talking to a wall who is merely reading from a script, and not really listening to you.
Today, for no apparent reason, one of my Vonage phones decided to stop working. So, I went through every setup step in the little pamphlet that came with the adapter, then went to the website to find out the other troubleshooting stuff, and went through all of that, and then found "Steve" who was not born in the US and had a thick Indian accent. Nice enough man, but obviously was not listening to me, and continued to go through the tech support script, saying things that I had to ask him to repeat 3 or 4 times. When I finally convinced him that I'm not a total idiot who didn't do everything according to the book, and who actually DID have know whether or not my Internet was up, and no, I'm not on Windows XP, and yes, I know the difference between a phone cable and an ethernet cable, he sent me to another Steve in "advanced tech support." I took that to mean "tech support for the literate user.
So I wasted over 1/2 an hour dealing with Mr. "Please repeat, I don't understand what you're saying" to finally be sent to another Steve, likely from the same part of the world, but I only had to ask him to repeat once or twice. He was much better, quickly got to the root of the problem - broken adapter - and is sending another one. Hopefully that line will be back tomorrow at some point.