Making a phone call was once a standard task.

This concept quickly changed for me however, with a single purchase. After buying an HP computer this past summer, a concern arose when trying to call their technical support center.

No one spoke my language.

Granted, computers have a language all their own, but buying a computer in America that is programmed in English should have at least been a factor in this company’s job outsourcing.

While it’s cheap labor, with workers willing to answer phones and attempting to answer questions for far less than the minimum wages in our country, this decision has put a damper on good old-fashioned customer satisfaction.

What happened to the days when your television would completely fade out or shut off and a trip to the local appliance store with friendly faces would cure the technology ailment?

What happened to knowing our warranties were never in jeopardy, and no matter what happened, our purchases would be backed-up?

Our society has become so fast-paced and non-personable, that when we have a simple concern with a computer, it takes four hours of being on hold with a random worker in India to take care of our needs.

The call center has to ask the same questions for every customer, but is it really necessary to ask me if I turned on my computer?

Obviously if I can take the time to dial the lengthy phone number, waste my time listening to outdated elevator music and advertisements from the company, and finally get the person to pronounce my name correctly, I would have already pushed the little circle of doom that turns on my machine.

In my case, the questions just seemed to get worse as the conversations trudged on.

While we established that my computer was in fact, turned on, it was also a dire need to ask if it was plugged in and the monitor was connected.

Then I was finally given an opportunity to simply state that one program wasn’t running properly.

Once my dilemma was recognized, the company’s solution was to call yet another number, put another night of my life on hold, and have me restate exactly what was happening.

This led to just giving up and wanting to send the already malfunctioning contraption back to wherever it originally came from; which was a challenging task in itself.

On top of getting the call redirected on numerous different occasions, technical support did not fathom the idea of returning the entire computer for a refund.

While I know these major companies don’t have the time to consider each and every individual that decides to purchase one of their computers, I think they could at least find some way to make their customers “satisfied.”

To avoid phone conversations, a solution is to use the online technical support center to look up a solution or chat with a real person.

However, when your device is not working properly to allow you onto the Web site, a call to tech support is sadly inevitable.

Send comments to Sarah Barnes at [email protected].