Shipping certain operations to countries with cheaper labor is a very popular trend right now, particularly in the financial industry and technology organizations. Sites like Outsource2India advocate the obvious economic advantages of outsourcing certain operations, which in theory sounds fine. Has anyone had negative experiences lately with a call centers based overseas? I have had 2 recently with India, and both were horrendous. The first was a call I placed to American Express several months back about an account security issue. The service representative from India informed me that there was a suspicious charge on my wife's account for Sex. My response was obviously "what????" It turned out after 5 more minutes of discussion and conferencing in my wife that he was not saying "Sex" but was in fact trying (quite poorly) to say "Sacks, " and the charge was legit. The call probably took 10 minutes longer than it should have. My more recent experience was with Microsoft a few weeks back...