[ale] Enterprise Linux's

[James P. Kinney III]

My kids have as few toys made in China as I have been able to handle. I
don't want to do business with China because I don't want to support
their political system. I have a very strong tendency to be as selective
as I can with how I redistribute my small resource base. 

I dropped Mindspring because the service and support stunk. Not because
it came from another country and was spoken by people with an accent I
couldn't understand. Mindspring f*$%^d up my account every month for 2
years. They were billing me for services they were no longer providing
because they could no longer provide to my satisfaction.

I will not knowingly purchase from thieves, thugs, crooks, dictators, or
anyone else who practices behaviors I find to be morally reprehensible.
Hence I am dropping support of Microsoft products from my business as I
loath to touch the systems.

Working a 24x7 support center is a crappy job. I know this first hand as
I used to work at HP in their call center. The pressure to get the
caller off the phone is enormous. The tracking methodology used by the
management did not foster an environment where problems were solved.
Instead, it actively developed the CYA mentality that paralyzed the
operation into a band-aid process instead of actually solving the root
problem that initiated the chain of events preceding the call.

Since that mentality for support centers is the current standard that is
being shipped to the outsourced call centers (along with several other
atrocities that make for a horrid work environment), I am extremely
unhappy with the way many call centers are run and operate.

Since the trend is to lower production costs to maximize profits and
likewise pass on a tiny slice of those saving by lowering the final
product price to the retail buyer, the WalMart mentality is taking over
every aspect of culture in this country. It sickens me to think that
mindset is now running school systems and science research labs.

Blaaagh. You really jabbed a nerve on this.

On Mon, 2005-10-10 at 20:11 -0700, Jim Popovitch wrote:
> --- "James P. Kinney III" <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, 2005-10-10 at 18:55 -0400, Bob Toxen wrote:
> > > One of my clients who does pay for RHEL support tried the support.  He
> > > got a woman in Singapore whose English was too poor for him to understand
> > > her.  So much for support or "buying American".
> > 
> > That truly stinks. I have never used RedHat's support for anything so I
> > don't know if it's worth anything. But what you described is the reason
> > I dropped Mindspring after 10 years.
> 
> Got kids?  Dropped all their toys made in China?
> 
> I've never really understood the "pro-American ONLY" approach to things.  I can
> understand showing preference for American products, or even preference for
> another nation's products (think: BWM, Mercedes, and even Mushu Pork).  
> 
> What real American options are there for outsourcing a 24/7/365 day call
> center?  I know IBM does this, but I hear they actually provide the service
> from other countries.  I don't think that companies that outsource actually
> look to do it from other countries, they just look to find a reasonable cost
> savings (just like most businesses do)
> 
> One more question:  What if the operator spoke to you with a heavy Irish accent
> and didn't know where on the map Atlanta was?  Would you be equally troubled?
> 
> -Jim P.
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
-- 
James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244                    \.___________________________./
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part