There's a few things in this thread bothering me-
The fact we consider it surprising that someone from another country is able to provide good service, it seems like some of the people here consider people from outside of America to be idiotic.
There is a few things here that make the difference when it comes to customer service (from any country). It depends on the type of training they received and how comprehensive it was and it also depends on the type of person you are speaking with.
Much of time you get poor customer service that is outsourced it is because the company they are working for provided poor training and not because that person is incompetent, you most likely should be angry with the company they are working for and contact them via another method to let them know your a disappointed but there is really no reason to get mad at the person you are working with.
Also, so many people seem to get angry with the representatives because they follow a script, and that is definitely not something to get mad at them about as well, again the company is most likely providing poor training so they don't really understand what they are working with and that the company knowing that they have poorly trained their representative DEMAND that they follow the scripts, and they run the risk of getting fired or punished for doing something they are not supposed to do.
I myself work in customer service and have dealt with many outsourced departments and most commonly Covad, Qwest, Verizon, and CenturyTel. I know that these people have to follow their own polices and methods and I do my best to work with them, sometimes its very tiresome but I have never lashed out of them and only have spoke with this with people who can work with us about this, such as the Telco. Representative who works directly with our company.
As a side note it seems that many people think that all outsourced representatives work in India but its becoming that most are being moved to other locations such as the Philippines.