Rob,
My point was that whatever the reason for the disconnect, nationality, understaffing, communication - whatever, wherever, it doesn't really matter as the process _is_ broken as evidenced by the absurd time KungFuCow is having.

Regarding off-shore call centers - I'm personally against them - if only for the reason that frankly, the few experiences I've had with it the reps have been hard to understand. That's not a racist comment, that's a fluency comment. If there were no accent/understandability issues I can't say that I'm against it, I understand perfectly the business logic. I'm just saying that the replacment offshore houses I've experienced are not as good as those they replaced, due to the accents. If the accents were better, I'd probably not notice (apart from the crappy connection quality/timelag which is a whole separate matter).

WRT American service - I've seen it both ways. I get good service from some companies, crappy service from others (and size of Co. is no barometer for this). Right now it looks like Rio is falling into the second category, which is a shame as the core product(s) is(are) so good (for which we have you & the Cambridge crew in large part to thank).

-Zeke