Long-Distance Customer Service

Just seeing the headline “He’ll Take Your Job and Ship It” (Column One, April 27) made me want to respond.

I helped a friend purchase a computer from Dell. We had it professionally installed by the phone company but, alas, it had a problem, freezing from the moment it was used. We called support and had the annoying experience of trying to deal with someone from India, who was hard to understand and could not find a solution for the problem.

I then tried e-mailing support and again was dealing with India. They decided it was the hard drive and sent another, refurbished, which they expected us to install on a new $2,000 computer. The whole experience was extremely frustrating, and our solution is to return the computer.

We are trying a different company and hoping for a better experience.

Dean Blau

Van Nuys

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Atul Vashistha tells us that globalization will be good for American workers.

Of course, Kenneth Lay and Enron told us that deregulation would save us money on our electricity costs here in California.

Bill Serantoni

Thousand Oaks

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Vashistha may not be quite so sanguine once his own enterprise is “offshored.”

Leslie Collier

Laguna Niguel