Posted By joe rusz on 12/03/2008 6:47 PM
C.T.
By beginning three of your sentences with "she," and emphasizing "YOUR language," you have taken part of a thread that was a gripe about the hidden costs of computers (among other things) and made it seem that I have disdain for women, foreigners, and off-shore businesses, which is not the case at all.
I mentined that it was dealing with a woman--a nice one at that--because that's who was on the other end of the line. I said she was in Manila because that's where she was. For the record, I have a lnumber of Filipino friends so I was able to use a little of the Tagalog I know to thank her for her help and bid her a good day.
That "she was able to repair my problem" suggests that I was amazed that a mere woman could solve a real problem. My wife is one of the smartest people in the world and I have nothing but respect for all women.
What amazed me was not that "she" was able to diagnose my problem, but that one can do this by remote control from halfway around the world.
As for paying for services, I don't mind ponying up whatever it takes to fix a problem when something breaks. But when a manufacturer of a product that's barely three months old and still under warranty charges me $239 to fix a problem that they were able to solve in 45 minutes by phone, that's what I object to.
Joe:
Oops, sorry, I didn't intend to imply anything like that.
I used "she" simply because if I had used "he" it would have been grossly inaccurate. No other meaning should be implied at all. As for any "Sexist" attitude in me, well, I would, in general, much prefer to interface with a women in business dealings than a man.
I mentioned the language barrier because the last time I interfaced with a person with a different native language there was a near total lack of any actual communication, even though both he (it was a "he", in Taiwan) and I worked very hard at it. Your ability to communicate with her in her native language is pretty good... I have just enough command of a few other languages to know that I should never attempt to use any of them in the presence of someone for whom it is their native one.
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I did not intend to imply that anyone should be astounded that a woman was able to diagnose the problem, it was that anyone could be able to diagnose it in a remote location via the computer link... (interesting diagnosis, too!). I am a retired computer programmer (nearly 40 years of it) and I have worked with both men and women programmers in group programming situations and, pardon my extreme sexist attitude, but I much prefer WOMEN programmers to men. It may be a cliché that women are not logical, yet I find that, in general, most women can program circles around most men. I have seen some pretty lousy women programmers and they were still better than the lousy men programmers; the better programmers of both sexes were pretty much on a par with each other. Some of that can be attributed to the relative numbers of programmers of each sex, and also that women have traditionally had a harder time breaking into certain areas of business and thus had to be "better" just to break even, but I am of a mind to think that in the general population it would still hold true. But then, I'm a Male Chauvinist Pig... just ask my ex-wife.
And I still agree with you that the warranty should be for the "computer" as a whole, not just the hardware and that the software is the customer's problem... but I also can see the manufacturer's point of view in that the hardware is harder for the end user to screw-up (and there is always evidence if the end user take a 10 pound lump hammer to it) and the software is much too exposed to the user rearranging it to unworkable configurations... The butcher shop here guarantees that they sell fine steaks, but if the customer burns it to a crisp they won't replace it for free. Software is somewhat like that... and it is just too difficult to make it such that the end user can't season it with ground glass and cook it with napalm.
But I also think you got off CHEAP. And I don't say that to make you feel bad... if I believed in luck, I'd say you were lucky. I think it could have been much worse!
