When calling any major company for technical assistance or customer support lately I’ve been so frustrated I want to scream.

I had to make a customer service call about something a couple of weeks ago and reached a girl in Mexico. Her accent wasn’t too thick and she was nice and resolved my problem.

Last week I had a problem with my computer and tried to call the manufacturer since they had installed Windows XP on the computer.

I got an American, but all he said he could do was reset the computer to the original settings, which meant I would have to re-install all my programs after backing them up. I declined.

I then went to Microsoft’s web site to get a help number. The quoted fee was $59 and I decided the aggravation of seeing my desktop with rectangles in color under every icon was worth the cost.

I got my call answered by a very prim and proper gentleman who sounded British and was very rude; almost condescending.

He insisted the price was $79 and I insisted the price on the website was $59. Finally, Mr. Personality relented.

I later found out he was just the guy who assigned a trouble ticket number and collected the money.

I was transferred to another Indian (did I tell you Mr. Prim and Proper was from India?)

This was a nice guy who said his name was Patrick. Sure it was. The first thing he wanted to do was take control of my computer, and like a fool, I allowed him to do so.

He never resolved the problem after making registry changes and who knows what else before he left and I went to bed.

The next day someone from India called me to see if I was satisfied with the service, and when I said I had the same problem she put me on with another technical assistant.

She immediately told me she had to take control of my computer, and I hadn’t learned my lesson yet, so I let her.

She managed to get a view on the computer I had never seen and couldn’t get it back to the correct desktop view. I asked her how she did that so she could un-do it, but she claimed something opened up by itself and gave her that view.

I asked her how a program could open itself and got no answer.

Finally, I told her I wanted her to put everything back the way it was and I’d live with it. I told her to close out the ticket as unresolved and I called to get a refund.

Sunday I came home from church with a voice mail message from some guy with Microsoft in India telling me he was calling about something and would send an email to me so I could call back.

I never got the email, and I never understood what he was calling about because his accent was so thick.

Each person I talked to had a progressively thicker Indian accent than the last one.

They all had American names, as if any American would actually believe they were their real names.

All I want is my desktop to look the way it used to (yes, I’ve done system restore several times) and be able to understand the instructions from the technician.

After the last girl messed up my computer completely I found I was unable to open any Microsoft Office products without the product trying to re-install and re-configure everytime.

I called India again, and this time told him I would not give him control of my computer. Somehow he got my problem fixed but when I tried to open Outlook the program was corrupted.

I tried to uninstall it, but it was as if it were already uninstalled as I couldn’t get into the program and the icon showed up like an uninstalled program.

I used my disk and, after typing the 25 character product ID several times, was able to restore my email.

Now, if my desktop would just look right and if I had the same sounds on the system I’d be happy, but I won’t be calling India anytime soon.

I’d rather take a beating.