Dell, Repairs, and the March of History

Taylor's new Dell laptop made it back to Tirana after Christmas and lasted about a week before the screen went kaput.  The following is a condensed version of the events, but suffice it to say that I spent a lot of time with emails and phone calls to Dell to arrange to have it repaired.  I talked to their local repairman in DC, Bill, and we made arrangements for me to bring the computer with me and take it to our friend Joey's law firm, where Bill could go and change out the screen.

I called Bill to tell him Joey had the computer, and Bill told me that Dell had canceled the repair order, I had to call Dell again.  So I started over, listened to the same "on hold" ads, including one that said for a certain amount of money I could "upgrade" my technical support to a North American location.  I assume they thought I would be interested in this offer because I would then be the beneficiary of getting to talk to technicians who spoke and understood English, but I turned down the offer.  Anyway, the upshot of this call, which lasted an hour and during which I talked to one guy and then his boss, was that I had to go back to Joey's office and call them back again so that I could do a test.  They were not satisfied when I told them I had done this test before; it just would not do unless I did it again.  So last night I went back to Bingham McCutcheon on K Street NW in Washington, DC, and got the computer from Joey and spent one hour -- another one hour consult!-- on my cell phone (Cost:  $5.50) doing the test, which accomplished nothing other than to convince the fellow I needed a new screen.  So maybe they'll come and fix it now.

The whole episode reminded me of Tom Friedman's book, "The World Is Flat," in which he rhapsodized about the new global economy, including a chapter extolling the virtues of call centers in Bangalore, India being harbingers of a new world economic order.  It was an interesting book, but like a lot of "new world order" books, not quite timely.  Or to be more precise, maybe a bit premature.

Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776) and Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto (1848) and later Das Kapital, are both political/economic treatments of the same event  (with many detours, especially in Marx's case), the Industrial Revolution, one written early on when the benefits seemed to be ushering in a new glorious age (the Friedman take), and the others written later, when some of the malevolent side-effects of industrialization on societies were evident.  A little pre-Einstein relativity, if you will.  So we'll see what the anti-Friedman has to say in 50 years, and then 100 years from now we can start arguing over it.  

I'm betting, though, that Tom never had a problem with his computer that necessitated him spending hours on the phone calling India.