fine whine

I cannot be sure of this, of course, but I think I may have been a victim of outsourced customer service today. All I have to go on are a couple of names that don't sound like typical white folk (yeah, we're treading in ethnic waters now, but I'm nothing more than a insensitive American): Govardhana Chakrapani and Savitha Kumari. I can only suspect that I'm either dealing with India or a strange place without the letter 'e'.

So what? As long as they can help me, I don't care who or where they are. But have they helped me? It's difficult to say. I'm in something of an odd position, as I am asking them for help with something to which I have no claim: somebody else's website. Admittedly I am supposed to be making some improvements to it (and I am, really) but my name in no way is connected to the account. So that's a minor hurdle. Might I also mention that this is the third migration these people (the actual site owners) have had since signing up with Dell hosting oh so long ago? Moreover might I mention that this time around the new hosts didn't have copies from even the previous week to start from?

Oh, and that they changed the passwords, perhaps? I'd like to know, in general, why they can't use something less esoteric for the logins for these "professional" hosting services. Why must it be what seems to be a random smattering of letters and numbers? That's what passwords should be made of, not usernames. I get to use plain English for my login on my three-bucks-a-month box, so why not one that costs seven or seventy times that? Where's the user friendliness here? Or is it over on the other side of the planet? This frustrates me, even when I know that I could probably bill the hours spent sitting on the 24x7 customer support line (it's one guy in Bangalore, I'd wager). I just don't want the hassle.