Phoning for "help".

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More and more customer service phone lines lead to India or Pakistan where well-meaning, and no doubt poorly paid, agents receive our calls and try to make us feel better even though they have no idea where our airline baggage (and many other items that have a tendency to go astray) has ended up. Invariably we get upset with the inability of these agents to give us clear and satisfying answers to our stress-filled queries. And certainly it's not their fault that the scripts that they're instructed to follow rarely answer our questions. They, after all, are trying to put food on the table, and their employers, no doubt closer geographically to those asking the questions that to those trying to answer them, are more than willing for them to get the inevitable flak. And perhaps we shouldn't complain. Ordinarily a phone call to India would be expensive, but in these circumstances we're able to make it free of charge, and often over and over again since only rarely do our problems get solved.

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Go to: Making Jack dull.