I think its a case of bad accents rather than bad english, the people in call centers understand you, but its hard to understand the accent of the person talking back.

My robotics course is a great example, it is completely multi-cutlural, chinese, english, french and geek. I have the hardest time understanding the french people because they have the worst english accent, they speak fine english but because of the way that they say some words and the speed that they talk (english seems quite a slow langauge compared to french and chinese), we british are a bit dumb and cant quite keep up with it.

I dont have a problem with outsourceing, i can see the benifits instantly, its cheaper which means that savings can be passed on to the consumer, thats how dell can offer such cheap prices, but as long as the out sourcers go throught the same training and checking that an english company would then there are no problems.

I would have just as much trouble understanding someone from liverpool with a strong accent as someone from india or even america if their accent didnt fit with the language they are talking.

As for tech support, I’m setting up my own tech support comany very soon and i would never ever employ someone who couldnt fix any problem i throw at them.
A good tech support will know what to do as soon as they hear the symptoms, not just run thru a list.

Ultimately, this is for another post, but I think people get upset with companies going offshore for a few reasons. 1.) that might have been a job that we could have used and 2.) it’s not our fault our cost of living is so high, that it’s easier to employ where it’s not.

In addition to this, people in the US IT industry see these companies as setting a precedent of not being willing to invest in the future of US IT, and hate the company for it, not the outsourced employee.

That’s why I put it back to ‘offshore’. From what I can see, IT people in the US don’t hate people from India or elsewhere, they hate it when US companies use a lower cost of living overseas to justify undermining the country’s IT employee base. Ultimately, it’s not just US IT that is annoyed by this. The more the companies do it, the more news coverage it gets, and the less people enroll in IT when entering college/university. This makes the problem worse.

All in all, just wanted to clarify what most people I know in the US IT industry feel like on this subject. The ones that take the time to understand the issue are immediately annoyed when a foreign representative comes on the phone, because they realize the company they’re giving money to in their support contract is using those funds to develop an IT industry that they’re not a part of…and it’s frustrating to be participating in the destruction of your own IT industry.

The difficulties in understanding over the telephone are an additional frustration, made worse by the reasons listed above. I have yet to actually speak to an offshore rep that spoke very understandable English. On the other hand, offshore reps also tend to be fairly proficient, moreso than local helpdesks who don’t put as much emphasis on training. The problem is that it usually takes 2 or 3 tries to get an answer.

Hope that clears things up for you, and explains a little bit about how most IT guys I know feel about the situation. To summarize, it’s not you, it’s the lack of dedication by US companies to support the US IT infrastructure that annoys most IT pros in the US.