[dcarmich]

I was reading AppleInsider this morning, and I came upon a story about the former VP of AppleCare leaving the company, as well as another rumor that worried me _more_:

(From http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...threadid=48222):

A downsizing of Apple call centers is expected to follow the restructuring, as the company continues to outsource its customer support to locations in India, Holland and the United Kingdom.

Should I be worried? When I had to call Apple tech support (I do have AppleCare on my PB17) for an issue I had with 'shocks' on the case, I had a very good experience and they resolved my problem very quickly.

I've heard the horror stories from others about dealing with 'offshored' tech support, and I think that Apple would be shooting themselves in the foot if they were to outsource it, based on the premium that Apple's products command in the market (and the superior customer satisfaction ratings they have.)

What do you think? (I personally will take a look at other options when it comes time to get my next system if they do do this.)

--Douglas

[Randman]

FUD, fud.

You might as well give up computers if you don't want to deal with outsourcing tech help in the future.
Besides, it seems a little ignorant to be towel wringing and gnashing your teeth without any facts to back it up.
You do realise that India has a very strong IT infrastructure, it's better wired than many places in the US and the level of IT help could actually improve.
English is a major language there, and tech centers are even working to improve the peoples' diction.
Face the facts, it's a global world. Your computer may be designed in California, assembled in Taiwan or China and tech help from the likes of India.
I'd be more scared if they said the tech centers were being moved to Mississippi or Arkansas as the average educational level in those states are below much of what can be found in Asia.

[OreoCookie]

Would be nothing new. They did outsource to China already in attempt to save costs ... (at the expense of quality).

[Cody Dawg]

I've reached Apple in India on several occasions.

Pretty sad.

Apple disappoints me greatly. Apple is turning a huge profit and they start trying to scrimp and save more money by putting a person through to somebody in India on a:

- Bad overseas connection
- With someone who speaks unintelligible English
- Someone in a foreign country who may want or need my credit card number (yes, they asked for it and I would not give it to them and was promptly transferred to another division - in the United States)

Apple...

[Cody Dawg]

BTW, Randmann, this comment:

I'd be more scared if they said the tech centers were being moved to Mississippi or Arkansas as the average educational level in those states are below much of what can be found in Asia.

Is really idiotic.



People from Mississippi:

Medgar Evers (Civil rights leader)
William Faulkner (American author of literature)
Jimmy Buffett (American singer)
John Grisham (American author)
Fred Haise (Apollo 13 astronaut)
Dr. James Hardy (First kidney & lung transplants)
And many more

People from Arkansas:

William Jefferson Clinton (Rhodes Scholar & President of U.S. x 2)
Maya Angelou (American author of poetry & literature)
William Dillard (Founded Dillard's department stores nationally)
J. William Fulbright (of the Fulbright scholarship)
General Douglas MacArthur
Sam Walton (started Wal-Mart)
Conway Twitty (Singer)
Billy Bob Thornton (Actor)
And many more

Next time you go around making stupid comments about someone's intelligence based on their geographic location you should be a little smarter and do some research. It's like saying, "Where are YOU from, Randmann, because based on your comments all of the people where YOU live must be stupid."

[Cody Dawg]

Oh, and one last thing? Maybe if Apple moved their centers to places where there is more poverty and therefore less education and less educated people, the economy would be helped and education would improve and we would have more educated people in places that are historically poor and uneducated.

I realize, Randmann, that you made that comment in passing, but labeling people because of their location is not right. That is the same, to me, as labeling people because of the color of their skin: First, it has no bearing on intelligence and second, being born in a particular place is not something a person chooses.

[Randman]

I lived and worked at a newspaper in Hot Springs, Arkansas, shortly after graduating uni, so thank you anyway. Along with the two years there, I later spent 5 years in South Carolina, @ Myrtle Beach, so I'm not uninformed.
I've also travelled to other countries and while abroad, have met and worked with Indians (in fact, I have an Indian friend who's as big a Machead as I am).

It's you who made the ignorant, and racist comments. Are you sure it was a foreign outsourcing from Apple who helped you? 100% sure? Or just making comments based on what limited scope you are aware of?

And to list some greats from each state is silly. What, I'm supposed to list Gandhi and the like in response?

Basically, my stance is this (for all the limited-thinking reactionaries): Don't be afraid of the unknown, don't be racist and don't start proclaiming doom based on heresay and other "facts" of dubious origin.

Oh, and kodiedog, since you say I should know about places such as Arkansas and Mississippi before making comments on them, can you say the same thing? Have you been to India?

[effgee]

Originally posted by Cody Dawg:
BTW, Randmann, this comment: *snip* Is really idiotic. ... labeling people because of their location is not right. ...

Originally posted by Cody Dawg:
I've reached Apple in India on several occasions. Pretty sad. ... With someone who speaks unintelligible English ... Someone in a foreign country who may want or need my credit card number (yes, they asked for it and I would not give it to them and was promptly transferred to another division - in the United States)
...

it's comedy monday - yay!!


... you're concerned about india? wait 'til you talk to the first dutch guy</sarcasm>

[Cody Dawg]

Okay, so it's Monday and I'm grumpy. My dog is stolen out of my back yard, my kid has been vomiting non-stop for a week, and I have a doctor's appointment this morning for the kid and myself. I admit that I'm a bit on the edge.



I'll admit that Randmann has some good posts, yeah.



I just get rattled when people generalize about the intelligence of people based on their geographic location, race, or religion, that's all. I know that Randmann was probably making some kind of a joke.

(I think? )




Have a good one!

[effgee]

Originally posted by Cody Dawg:
... Have a good one!

you too, cody - hope your doctor visit(s) go well and you get your doggie back (wtf is the matter with people, anyway? stealing a dog out of the backyard? bastards ...)

keep your chin up - tuesday's right around the corner!

[Cody Dawg]

Yeah, they took him - his collar was on the ground - and he was gone. He has never had a problem. I heard kids playing, laughing, yelling and I was out front and at the neighbor's house going over some legal things (my attorney lives across the street from me) about our hurricane claims and insurance and when I came back, the collar was on the ground. It's one of those collars that keeps the dog in the yard -- invisible fencing.

I'm really bummed.

I guess I should start a thread about dog thefts or else this thread will be derailed.

(Or, should I say, dethreaded?)

[Randman]

Ok, sorry to hear about the dog. I have much more empathy toward pets, especially dogs, than most humans.
I'll just close my participation in saying good luck with the pooch hunt, hopefully he hasn't been outsourced.

[Spliffdaddy]

Looks like Apple borrowed the AT&T business model.

That's where you brag about offerring the highest-quality products and services, charge a premium for that 'high-quality', then offer the same low-end crap that you can get from any of your competitors.

Hey, look. AT&T lost $7 Billion last quarter.

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally posted by Randman:
I'd be more scared if they said the tech centers were being moved to Mississippi or Arkansas as the average educational level in those states are below much of what can be found in Asia.

Not everyone in the south is a hillbilly.

The point is, people in the US, like to talk to people in the US in the same way people from other countries enjoy talking to people from their country.

[paully dub]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
Not everyone in the south is a hillbilly.

The point is, people in the US, like to talk to people in the US in the same way people from other countries enjoy talking to people from their country.

Not exactly- if it were Canada or another mother tongue English speaking country with a clear connection and people who you can more or less have a conversation with, most people would be fine with that too.

I've had bad experiences with Dell's Indian support. It's just bad. I have nothing against India, or Indians.

But when I've had to call Apple support, I almost always got somebody I could talk to on a more personal level. I once had this exchange when calling Apple Support. He was looking up an Apple Store nearest me.

Apple "Dude":"Let's see...there's a store in the Walt Whitman mall...hey wait a minute that doesn't make sense"

Me: "Walt Whitman? He was from Long Island you know"

Him: "Oh yeah, totally. Leaves Of Grass is totally one of my all time favortie books. I was just supprised they named a mall after him. How ironic."

Me: Chuckle "Yeah you're right."

[Randman]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
Not everyone in the south is a hillbilly.

The point is, people in the US, like to talk to people in the US in the same way people from other countries enjoy talking to people from their country.

I agree with the first part. But in the same context, not everyone outside the US is a bumbling, mumbling indiot.

And the second graf is just silly. People from California speak much differently than people from Texas who speak different than people from Minnesota who speak different than people from Alabama who speak differently than people from Boston who speak differently from people in New York.

You're in Carolina, right? You're saying you have problems speaking with snowbirds from Canada, but not from Ohio? Really?

[MilkmanDan]

Oddly I can understand people speaking english in India better then people speaking english in the south.

[Randman]

If people want to make an issue of jobs going abroad, I can handle that (though I think it can be a good thing for an economy on the whole to outsource). And if people want to make an issue out of customer service, regardless of locale or nationality, needing to be improved, I can accept that.

But the rest is just people afraid of what they don't know and responding to the fear-mongering tactics so popular in the US these days.

[dcarmich]

Originally posted by paully dub:
Not exactly- if it were Canada or another mother tongue English speaking country with a clear connection and people who you can more or less have a conversation with, most people would be fine with that too.

Paully, you hit the issue on the head RIGHT THERE. It's not that I'm prejudiced against any specific nationality.

It's that when I call for support on a supposedly higher-end product (and Apple has been marketing themselves in that manner), I want to be able to communicate my issue to someone who will understand me clearly, handle my issue efficiently, and resolve it in a timely fashion. Especially if I'm paying $349 for 3 years of AppleCare on top of the $4k for a PB17 + Final Cut Pro.

(Wonder if they'll 'pull a Dell' and introduce a 'premium' AppleCare support option after they get backlash from pro users.)

--Douglas

[Cody Dawg]

Hi dcarmich: I think you tried to PM? My PM box says "full" and it is NOT full. I keep writing to MacNN admin asking why that is and so far it is not fixed. My PM box is "empty" but says full.

Oddly I can understand people speaking english in India better then people speaking english in the south.

Funny -- probably true!

[OB1]

I recently changed banks. The bank I'd been with for years had out-sourced its call centers to India. No problem I thought. But when I had to speak to them it was like they were reading from a script or just working their way through a flow chart. As soon as I asked a question - silence..., then they would just come back with another standard question like they were looking for a response they understood. Their spoken English was very good, it just seemed to be limited to certain sentences. The conversation went round in circles for a while, but I managed to arrange an appointment to meet with my bank manager in person. Then I went in and closed my account. The phone call itself (audio quality) was good, no delay or anything

[Sherwin]

Nobody from outside the country can understand my accent unless I get down to the voice-dictation-into-computer-3-words-a-minute style. Needless to say, I have problems with outsourced call-centres.

My old doctor's Indian. She couldn't understand what I was saying, I couldn't understand what she was saying. Cue lots of inane grinning and pointing at body parts.

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Originally posted by Cody Dawg:

- Someone in a foreign country who may want or need my credit card number (yes, they asked for it and I would not give it to them and was promptly transferred to another division - in the United States)

Apple...

Americans are more trustworthy?

[Sherwin]

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
Americans are more trustworthy?

Indian companies aren't bound by the same data protection laws that US and EU companies are - their data protection is quite weak, IIRC.

[Severed Hand of Skywalker]

Originally posted by Sherwin:
Indian companies aren't bound by the same data protection laws that US and EU companies are - their data protection is quite weak, IIRC.

I have had lots and lots of unauthorized charges on my credit card (90% by American companies) and my credit card provider will always credit me the money back. Always.

[Sherwin]

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
I have had lots and lots of unauthorized charges on my credit card (90% by American companies) and my credit card provider will always credit me the money back. Always.

It's not so much the unauthorised charges which are the problem with folks here - it's the possibility of identity theft and such like.

Do you really want an employee poking around in your private details (banking or otherwise) if they're not regulated by laws created by someone you voted into power?

[fireside]

Originally posted by Cody Dawg:
Hi dcarmich: I think you tried to PM? My PM box says "full" and it is NOT full. I keep writing to MacNN admin asking why that is and so far it is not fixed. My PM box is "empty" but says full.

have you baleeted the items from the sent items folder?

[Big Mac]

Originally posted by Severed Hand of Skywalker:
I have had lots and lots of unauthorized charges on my credit card (90% by American companies) and my credit card provider will always credit me the money back. Always.

You've had lots and lots of unauthorized charges on your credit cards? I think you need a copy of your credit report and some sort of identity theft service. I've never had an unauthorized charge on any credit card, and if I ever see one I will promptly close the compromised account.

Back on topic, with the growth of information technology, it was an inevitable development that lower-end and even mid-level IT jobs would travel overseas. If corporations can accomplish the same thing at reduced costs, they will choose that option - even if it's less convenient in some respects. One of the Apple customer service representatives I spoke to recently, "John," was most certainly from India. I'm glad that country is enjoying economic growth. John certainly did not know much about the Mac, but a low-level American representative was similarly clueless. An important lesson should be drawn: People who are employed as trained monkeys should not be shocked when their menial jobs are transferred to cheaper labor markets. If one wishes to survive in the economy tomorrow, one must be prepared to provide the goods or services that are inherently bound to the United States. In other words, something with a tangible quality, not low-level information. Otherwise, your job will be assimilated; resistance will be futile.

The hard truth is this: the American worker is expensive. His living costs are high, so he expects to be compensated well for even entry-level work. He expects to receive medical benefits, and some even advocate forcing employers to provide those benefits. All of this is only going to get worse due to the institutionalized entitlement mentality that has infected America. Witness a "conservative" president who has yet to veto a single bill. (The last president to go a whole term without using the veto was John Quincy Adams.) Did you know that mandatory federal entitlement spending is rapidly approaching 2/3 of federal spending? As the sole superpower, America has enjoyed a comfortable position for some time, growing increasingly fat and complacent. The products we consume will continue to be made in China, and our services will continue to be outsourced to India. Our borders will be violated into oblivion. Although we currently remain a prosperous country, the trade imbalance is really starting to trouble economists. I believe that alone is a harbinger of a bleak age to come. Perhaps one day the people will recognize these destructive trends, hopefully before the situation is incurable.

[Link]

For a company that charges such a premium for 'quality', this is getting silly.

Their quality went down, look at the ibook recall and all the probs with early powerbook g4s, look at how many defective g5s were mentioned in the powermac threads...

Their customer service has been dropping, I've heard people in the ibook /powerbook forums actually say "I'm afraid to send my computer in, it has problems but it might come back worse" (to that extent).

Let's not go over all the emac CRT probs, the imac analog boards.... damn

The OS? It's been over a year and one of the biggest problems with lookupd is STILL there, what the hell?

iPhoto didn't work very good at all until version 4.. same with ichat at version 2.

You say apple has quality? It's been dropping more and more and more..

And now they're outsourcing to INDIA? The same company that received praise for NOT doing that? Even Dell backed off this...

WTF?! Yes, WTFINGHECK?! wtf is wrong with them? India has a different language, a DIFFERENT CULTURE! They treat women differently in some parts of India and have different standards, it's a different culture!!

And so far, all this does is MESS UP COMPANIES: MCI did it, SBC is beginning to do it (I have yet to talk to someone from india, I ask), Dell and HP do it (and they get TONS of flack for it)...

It makes no sense to me why a company SO HIGHLY REPUTED FOR IT'S CUSTOMER SERVICE would want to risk it on a few bucks, and after all that long distance fee, they're not saving ****.

SH!T, if the censor covered that up, they'll lose customers. People buy apple products for more than just a pretty case.

[tooki]

Originally posted by Cody Dawg:
BTW, Randmann, this comment:

I'd be more scared if they said the tech centers were being moved to Mississippi or Arkansas as the average educational level in those states are below much of what can be found in Asia.

Is really idiotic.



People from Mississippi:...

Umm, maybe you should check your facts, Cody Dawg.

Those states are the bottom of the barrel in education in this country, and the U.S. as a whole has an education level massively below that of many Asian countries. In fact, U.S. lower education is worse than that of most industrialized nations, and even worse than that of several third-world countries.

So yes, Mississippi and Arkansas have educational levels well below those in Asia -- but so does the rest of this country.

tooki