It's not whether or not a person is in this country that's an issue. For me, it's whether I can communicate with them and whether they know their job. Unfortunately, when people hire individuals because they're cheap labor, you get what they pay for.

For customer service people, it's often someone to baby-sit telephones (a 'chair filler') and answer people's stupid questions with obvious answers. No thinking required, other than where on the checklist your question falls, so they know which stock answer to feed you.

Luckily, when they get a question that doesn't fit into the checklist, they'll refer you to someone who's expected to 1)listen, and 2)think. What sucks is that you have to go through the seat-filler first, and you KNOW they won't be able to help you, but they try... they HAVE to try. Then, you spend a bunch of time on 'hold' and have to go through the whole explanation with a new person, who first has to recommend the same ineffective things the chair-filler did.

Yes, it's frustrating, but the primary reason isn't because the jobs are outsourced or the employees are from other countries. The problem is that the companies doing the hiring them don't want to pay for employees with brains and communication skills, and there's nothing to make it worth their while to do so.

For the record, to me, the most offensive part of the message above is about people not from the US. People with accents. Some of the most intelligent, helpful people I've dealt with on line have had accents. But they also had skills.