My antivirus software needs renewal and since I'm no technical nerd I have no idea whether it's a better idea to call the technical support and try to do it myself, or to take my PC down to the local store and let them fix it there. The latter is of course more expensive but.. well, an image of a male who has tried to repair the plumbing on his own and managed to flood the basement instead of calling a professional probably offers a pretty good metaphor here. Anyway, I just called Gigantti's technical support to ask for their opinion and what do I get? Someone named Simon speaking English. I mean, I can ask this question in English since I'm a bloody translator and have the technical vocabulary to communicate it but what about the majority who cannot?! I've heard of this before: the company has stores worldwide, the headquarters in some low-taxation country and customer services somewhere in India as it's the cheapest there, but I've never encountered it myself. I should have inquired where he was at the moment. In India? The accent sure did match that (apparently they tend to train the advisors to speak with British accent but Indian accent was tracable in his speech). But seriously, is this what they call good customer service 'cause I don't. The automatic "press X if you want Y" selection in the beginning was in Finnish so of course I made the assumption that the advisor would speak Finnish, too. They should, at least, have a language selection there, goddamit!
I'm sure you've all heard the joke before of what it says in the paycheck of a Gigantti employee? I think they have managed to outlast themselves in savings by this...