Microsoft now with "jazz hands"!!

@faust1200: You beat me to it... I was gonna say "JUST STEVE!"

"some guy in India with a laptop powered by a heifer's holy nipples?"

That's blatently racist.

@TomK: My thoughts exactly.

"some guy in India with a laptop powered by a heifer's holy nipples?"
That's about as low a comment as I've seen on any blog. Anywhere. Why do I get the feeling that the Consumerist is only here showing its true colors? That its misplaced vitriol has clouded its judgment to the point of unfairly ridiculing almost a billion people?
I often doubt the merit of many posts here. However, now I don't feel bad for doing so: someone who posts such a hate-filled comment in the name of comedy deserves no benefit of the doubt.

No matter what you say, that guy just looks like the embodiment of pure evil. Why is it that people like him and Dick Cheney end up ruling the world (behind a puppet-figure)?

When have you ever called tech support for any company and NOT gotten someone who barely speaks english? It's not racist, it's fact. Outsourcing to countries who have ppl willing to work for substantially lower wages than americans. It's no different than Nike's sweatshops in Saipan. And I waited on tables for years, those are the rudest, most disrespectful ppl you could ever want sitting at one of your tables.

Be careful when you contact him. He might throw a chair at you.

Yea, because of out sourcing and other American's being exposed to some of the worst english in the planet who support us, as well as the blatent making Spanish an unofficial language has created more racist people than the KKK or the Neo Nazi's can ever hope to recruit. Every minority is a scape goat in the US for the frustrasted jobless straight white male who wants to work but he doesn't speak spanish, he wants more money than the indian. He's not on welfare so there's no tax incentive. The longer he's unemployed, the more racist he becomes until one day he snaps and blows up the OKC building because he's tired of them surrounding him in the west.

@DjDynasty: I blame the government.

@Anna_Banana:

When have you ever called tech support for any company and NOT gotten someone who barely speaks english?

Every time I've called Dell, I talked to someone who spoke perfect English. If they were not from North America, they sure fooled me.

It's not racist, it's fact.

Hmm... it's a fact that there is a "guy in India with a laptop powered by a heifer's holy nipples?" That's what comenters are reacting to. For one thing, last time I checked, no technology has been developed to use heifer's nipples to power laptops. I was in India for a little over 10 weeks last summer, sometimes in remote regions and everybody I saw with a laptop used a wall plug or a battery just like we do. Imagine that!

Outsourcing to countries who have ppl willing to work for substantially lower wages than americans. It's no different than Nike's sweatshops in Saipan. And I waited on tables for years, those are the rudest, most disrespectful ppl you could ever want sitting at one of your tables.

I'm not sure whether you're talking about people in Saipan or Indians. At any rate, if you are talking about Indians, my reply is that I've met Indians that were rude, Indians that were very considerate, Indians that were honest, Indians that wanted to rip me off, Indians that were helpful, Indians that could not have cared less, etc. I expect that people from Saipan are similarly varied in character.

That picture of Ballmer is the one I prefer. He looks like he's telling a scary story. "Linus Torvalds slithered towards me, fangs out and said: I will destroy MS with Linux!!! AHAHAHAHA!"

Or maybe he's trying to perform puppet theater but forgot the puppets.

Or perhaps telling a story about how he got to second base for the first time.

The possibilities are endless!

@faust1200: LMFAOO That made me crack up.

C'mon, if I learned one thing from the musical "Avenue Q" its that "Racisim Can Be Funny, Just a Little" and that was definitly racist. Furthermore it pales in comparison to some of the things that have spun through my head after explaining my situation for the 4th time to the same guy named Mike with the heavy indian accent.

Oh and BTW, as a male former assistant, its Exective Assistant or Administrator not secretary, you fasist sexist dopes.

@Prosumerist: You're right! The guy's an A-Hole. Please resist any temptation to call. You really don't wanna talk to Balmer. Hopefully you can make it through life without running into him.

Sorry, but your racism is far below the standards I expect for this blog.
I think that ultimately, racism against indians and other asians comes down to fear about your own laziness. Those people work hard, they work together, as a matter of culture.

Amen to that, considering I never did, and never will, buy a Microsoft product in my lifetime.

Ben, you need to stop hitting the crack pipe. These "shock jock" type comments don't really serve your blog's interests.

@lemur:

You must be very lucky to have gotten someone who spoke "perfect English" at Dell. The last time I called, maybe 3 years ago, every time I got somebody who could barely put two sentences together. It's frustrating when you've dropped $2000 on a machine and you get this kind of service.

Also, I've been on the floor of one of their desktop manufacturing centers outside of Austin (don't know if we were truly in Round Rock, probably though) and one of the managers showing my group around confirmed how upset people were with Indian support and how they were bringing more back to the US.

There are some thin skinned people around here.

Okay....................back on topic.

I've been struggling with my 5th repair on my xbox 360, pleading for them to replace it with a new unit (the last 3 had problmes indicative of poor quality control in the rerubished units they send out).

I outlined my case, and sent it to both emails.

I'll let Consumerist know (with a picture of me giving "thumbs up") if this course of action works.

Both Bill and Steve have whole staffs of people who's whole job it is to manage their email boxes. Their job is to triage email, and only the very important actually makes it onto their desk. Your email would likely get sent to some sort of executive escalation team.

@Hawk07: The only problem I had with the service at Dell was that they would waste my time on the phone. I called once to get them to replace the power supply of my Inspiron. Within 5 minutes the woman had all the information and I gave her a correct diagnosis of the problem. Was that enough for her? No, sir. I had to go through all the moves:

1. plug the device
2. unplug it
3. turning it on
4. turn it off
5. stand on one leg and rub my head
...

She basically wasted half an hour to come to the diagnosis I had given her at the very start of the call. *sigh!*

Although I must say, there's one time I called them because my motherboard had a problem. It was really weird. It was an intermittent problem that I could reproduce only by applying a specific degree of pressure in a specific spot under the laptop. I thought I would have a hard time convincing them but I guess the guy at the other end figured I was not talking out of my ass when I gave him the details of my experiments. They scheduled a home visit for me very quickly.

@faust1200:

I cannot stop laughing everytime I load the Consumerist mainpage and see this picture...

Well played!

Why would I want to contact Steve Ballmer? Haven't I suffered enough?

some guy in India with a laptop powered by a heifer's holy nipples?

Wow. That screams racist by just looking at it. If I was Indian, I'd be incredibly offended.

I'm not racist, but I despise calling an ostensibly english-language helpline and being connected to somebody who claims to be named "Michael" and yet speaks with an accent so thick I can barely understand him, then when I give him my information I have to spell out complex words like "David" and "Florida".

Is it his fault? No. It's still immensely frustrating for me calling a helpline and being connected to somebody who can't even speak my language.

The most recent time I called 18004MYXBOX, after getting my case ID number and telling me that it was already being worked on, the guy told me (and this is an exact quote), "You must secondly to be making sure that you are not losing this case number."

There's no excuse for that crap.

Back to the topic at hand (apparent racist comments aside)

Both of these accounts seem to still work, however, their spam filters are so tight, it looks like they bounce any mail not already in their contact list.

Talk about not being accountable for your company's actions. I bet being a shareholder won't change the fact that you cannot contact these two people. That being said, I'll be using the phone number today. I'll post back to let you all know how that goes.

If we can't laugh at ourselves and the people around us, then the world is a sad and terrible place. We are all stereotypes and frauds and should be seen as such. The fact is, that's funny as hell. If you wanna make fun of white men it;s cool though right? Boo. Anyone can make fun of anyone else in the world. It's people taking things to seriously that caused our world to go so far downhill already. Claiming to care about respecting and loving all people, but not having the respect to let defend and care for themselves is the greatest conceit, cause it just assuages the guilt most people feel for being entirely self involved 90% of the time.