In January ’09 I bought a new printer. I got a Hewlett-Packard, a brand I’ve used in the past with no problems. In March it began to give me trouble off and on, but I had an alternate printer, Kodak, primarily for photos and much slower than the little HP. By June I was really needing the faster, more economical to use HP. I called a computer whiz who fixed it in five minutes for a lot of money. I asked him what happens if it quits next week? He assured me he’d come back. It did quit and he didn’t come back, telling me it was NOT the computer but the printer.
Since it wasn’t six months old yet, I called the store where I got it to see about trading it for one that really would print. I was told I had to call HP tech support and if they deemed it not repairable, they’d let the store swap me for a new one. I was given the phone number and with trepidation, called. Sure enough, the girl who got my call was in India.
After 2 1/2 hours I told her we were just going in circles, I was tired, hungry and done for the day, thanked her and hung up. It is hard to listen that closely, ask "what?" so often and not be exhausted. The tech team let me cool off for a couple of days, then a woman who spoke better English called and proudly said she was a supervisor and they really really wanted to help me. I said no way would I spend two more hours on the phone with anyone and she assured me she’d have a level Two tech call me.
Fortunately for me a good friend who is tech savvy happened to be here before the call was due to occur, looked at it, removed the connecting cord from the Kodak printer and put it on the HP printer which began to hum and spit out copies immediately. When the level two tech called I explained what it was and thanked him, telling him it just took someone who thought outside the box.
I found in doing a little research that 49 percent of U.S. technology companies outsource with India getting 60 percent, SE Asia 50 percent, China 46 percent Western Europe 21 percent and Latin America 19 percent. Silicon Valley tech companies are worse with 64 percent using overseas service or production centers. Manufacturing leads what is outsourced with 74 percent, 51 percent of the tech companies send their programming out, 49 percent of research and development is sent out, 35 percent of the call centers are overseas and 45 percent of distribution. Some of the companies that we use every day outsource: Dell, Apple, IBM, Aetna, A.G. Edwards, Maytag, AIG, Lionel, Alamo, Mattel and Fischer-Price to name a very few.
Outsourcing is here to stay, despite the currency worries, unstable political times in so many countries and the language barrier. The foreign help is cheap, does not care about benefits or fancy offices. They only have to learn a foreign language and some technical skills and they have a job.
I couldn’t help but wonder what vision they had of some woman, half a world away who does her thinking in a box and goes in circles.
Sue Vandergriff is a columnist for The Carthage Press
