yay, i'm happy. no more crappy tech support for my latitude notebook!
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HOUSTON -- Dell Inc. has halted sending U.S. corporate technical support calls to its Bangalore, India, call center after complaints from commercial customers.
The Austin, Texas, computer maker said support for U.S. purchasers of its Optiplex desktop and Latitude notebook personal computers for now will be handled solely from existing facilities in Texas, Idaho and Tennessee facilities. Other products and regions aren't affected. The switchover was first reported in Saturday's Austin-American Statesman.
As part of the shift, more of its home-PC and consumer electronics calls will be routed to its Bangalore call center, a spokesman said. The moves won't affect employment in India or the U.S., he said.
"It's a re-distribution of tasks and calling queues," the spokesman said. "Corporate customers were telling us they didn't like the level of tech support they were getting [from Bangalore]," he said. He couldn't provide specifics of the complaints.
Brooks Gray, a senior analyst at Technology Business Research Inc., a Hampton, N.H., market researcher that tracks customer support, said Dell customers complained of language problems and delays in quickly reaching senior technicians.
"They were having a difficult time hiring the right engineers for those positions," Mr. Gray said. Dell opened its Bangalore call center in April 2001 and rapidly expanded its work force to 3,000 employees.
Dell, the world's largest PC maker, has been making a concerted push into selling services with its computers. U.S. server-computer support calls, which have been handled in the U.S., aren't affected, the company said.
