Reply #100: Offshoring and H-1Bs are all about money [View All]

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That money benefits company management and shareholders, and those cost savings are not often passed on to benefit the customers. In addition, the monetary savings are very likely offset by other costs that are much more difficult for the bean counters to quantify. Very rarely do I end a call to an offshore call center feeling satisfied or happy.

I'll give a personal example: A few years ago I bought an HP printer. I printed about 30 pages through it over of 12 months and it never could feed paper quite right from day one. Finally out of frustration I emailed their tech support, explaining that I'd tried all of their recommended cures for feed issues and none of them worked. So the guy from India that responded told me to do all of the things I'd already tried. That was the end of my relationship with HP and I bought a Canon to replace it. When it was time to upgrade my parent's printer, I bought them a Canon as well. That useless Indian guy was cheap to HP, but now HP has lost a couple of hundred bucks in business from me. In addition I'm happy to let coworkers and friends know my opinion on their lousy, poorly supported products. Perhaps Canon's support is just as lousy, but because their has product worked great right out of the box I haven't had to interact with them.