From a favorite on my blogroll, indexed, titled “You’re online? You’ll be okay”, a sobering reflection on our current internet woes:

UPDATE: Onemanbandwidth, a.k.a. “An American Professor Teaching in Guangzhou China Expat SEO Trade Consultant Blog” a.k.a. “AAPTIGCESTCB” has a post that nicely dovetails with this: lists of new experiences excerpted from a Chinese 24 year olds first visit to North America. Most notable: “tap water” and “taking a sauna in a house”.

WARNING! This is a rant, and an off-topic rant for TPD. Read at your own risk!

Okay. I’m a good liberal. A progressive, even. I’m “PC” in that I believe one should err on the side of politeness and respect. I think globalization is inevitable, and I heart immigrants.

I’m a multi-cultural kinda gal, you know?

But as the Animating Spirit of the Universe is my witness…

I HATE OVERSEAS CALL-CENTERS!!!!!

Really.

It’s a combination of things. Poor language skills, lousy phone lines, and a lack of cultural fluency that generally turns what should be simple transactions into bizarre and frustrating parallel monologues, often compounded by the fact that “Justin” and “Sophie” are reading from canned scripts that only sometimes match the situation you’ve called about.

I once refinanced my mortgage because the bank I’d been using outsourced their customer service overseas. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m not comfortable discussing my property taxes with someone in Bangalore who I’m not sure understands what I’m trying to do and what I need.

Two recent examples.

I wanted to bundle my phone and internet service and keep both my old phone number and my email address. My email provider said they could do that and save me something like seventy bucks a month. What’s not to like?

Well, for starters, there would be suddenly not being able to receive calls and getting a robot “Extension (your phone number here) is not available” message if you tried to call me. My service had been switched without warning, but only halfway.

I spent about two hours on the phone trying to straighten this out, to a call center that I’m guessing was in India.

The first representative told me that my phone service had been switched, but not my DSL, and that according to their IT engineers, they had to be switched at the same time. Therefore, my options were:

1. Change my phone number.
2. Switch my service back to my original provider, and then put the order in all over again, and make the switch in 4-6 weeks.

My response was: “Unacceptable. I am not changing my phone number. Unacceptable. I don’t know how long it will take for my current provider to make the switch. Unbelievable. I don’t understand why the voice and DSL can’t be switched at separate times.” And, further: “You created this problem, not me. I am your customer. You are not giving me confidence in your service. You need to fix the problem for me.”

Her response boiled down to: “I am very sorry for the inconvenience.” Repeat ad infinitum.

After going around and around, even getting on the phone with my old service provider and confirming that I couldn’t even talk to anyone until Monday, and it would be a new order, I finally said: “I realize this isn’t your fault, but I want to speak to a supervisor.”

More time on hold to the canned strains of Vivald’s 4 Seasons. Eventually, a supervisor “Vivian,” came on the line.

Now here’s where I make an exception to my loathing of overseas call-centers. Vivian was really good. She explained the situation, what had actually happened (I won’t bore you with the details) and that the DSL switch was scheduled for January 15th.

“Ah-HAH! So you CAN switch them at different times. I knew it!”

So I asked if there was any way to access the voice mailbox and change the message to let people know that my phone was wonky and to call me on my cell. She thought maybe that could be done. She also said that she could have my calls forwarded from my land-line to my cell phone until the problem was fixed.

We couldn’t change the voicemail message, but Option #2 worked like a charm.

Credit where credit is due – Vivian, wherever you are, you rock!

But apparently, that’s why she’s a supervisor, and it took two hours of my time to find her and get some help.

Here’s another example. This just happened tonight. I was booking my plane ticket to Beijing on the internet. I got a great fare, on sale. The sale lasted through Jan. 9. I selected the flight, the seats, clicked to purchase, and all of the sudden, my ticket was $100.00 more.

This cannot be, said I. I refused to accept it. I called the airline.

Somewhere in Bangalore, “Jonathan” took my call.

“Maybe the fare is over,” he suggested.

“No,” I insisted. “It was $667.00 when I chose it and selected my seats, just now. Then I went to purchase, and it was $775. The sale goes through January 9. It is still January 9 where I am.”

“You have to call web support. I cannot see the information. I will transfer you.”

After sitting on hold for ten minutes or so, I decided Jonathan’s solution was b.s., hung up and called Reservations again.

This time I got someone in the States. She was extremely helpful. She looked up the flight and said, “Oh. That should be $667.00. I don’t understand what the problem on the web was, but I can book it for you.”

The whole transaction took maybe ten minutes, and it only took that long because I was so pathetically grateful to deal with someone who could actually help me achieve my desired outcome, and I told her so.

“I’m not really allowed to say anything negative,” she told me, after hearing my tale of woe. “But we hear this all the time. And I’m just sorry you had to go through that.”

Let me be clear about this – I blame American companies who think they are saving money by outsourcing customer service overseas. Maybe they are saving personnel costs, but they are costing me, their customer, time and a considerable amount of goodwill, and they are creating aggravation and anger at a level that has prompted me to change whom I do business with. Oh yeah, Capital One. I’m talking about you! Citibank, you too!

One more.

I was trying to find a business I’d used in the past in my area. The number on the web now belongs to a private individual. So I called information to see if I could find an updated one.

I got an operator in freakin’ India.

“There is no listing for this business in…(“hiss!” “crackle!”) Santa Monica.”

Here’s the thing: back in the day, if you called an operator, they frequently were people who lived in your area. They might even know something about the business you were trying to find. They were local! Neighbors!

Okay. I know that there’s a price to be paid for a 24 hour world. I was dealing with my phone problems on a Friday night, from 9 PM until after 11. Maybe in the Olden Days I just would have been S.O.L. until more normal business hours.

But it’s like I said to the second airline customer service representative. I expect language barriers when I travel overseas. That’s part of the package. And if I don’t understand what’s going on, that’s pretty much my problem.

But when I’m sitting on my couch in Los Angeles, California, trying to get some help with whatever it is I’m dealing with, I want to deal with someone who is at least on my continent.

**************

Okay, since this is an off-topic rant for TPD, feel free to use the comments as a space to vent about your customer service frustrations of any and all sorts.

A Chinese-American baby was in line to get a $25,000 savings bond from Toys “R” Us until it was revealed her parents were illegal immigrants. Apparently Toys “R” Us had a rule in the sweepstakes that a baby would be disqualified if their mother was illegal, and Chinese-Americans are mad:

The first baby of the year is usually a one-day story. But Albert H. Wang, a corporate lawyer who read about Yuki Lin’s lost chance on the Web site of the Chinese-language newspaper The World Journal, was outraged enough to start an e-mail campaign that is enlisting the ire of prominent Chinese-Americans like the president of the Asian American Business Development Center and officers of the Organization of Chinese Americans.

Their criticism, and threats of a media campaign against the company, come just a month after the chain opened its first store in China, in Shanghai.

“They want business from China,” said Mr. Wang, 39, adding that most of the chain’s toys are made by Chinese workers in China. “But when it comes to this Chinese-American U.S. citizen, she was deprived of $25,000 intended to be used for her college education, because of who her parents are.”

All this comes right after Toys “R” Us opened its first mainland store in Shanghai. Will there be a boycott? Well, the story got picked up a bit on the Mainland, but apparently Toys “R” Us quickly changed its mind:

On Saturday, the company released a statement saying “We deeply regret that this sweepstakes became a point of controversy. As a result, we have decided to award all three babies in the grand prize pool a $25,000 savings bond.”

There were three babies born “first” on January 1st, and Yuki Lin had initially won a random draw between them before the prize was retracted. None of them were really the first though:

Ole Pedersen, a spokesman for Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center in Brooklyn, said the hospital initially believed it had won the sweepstakes with the midnight birth of Odunayo Muhammed to a Nigerian immigrant couple, Christiana and Abdul Muhammed. Later he learned that the doctor who reported the birth online had missed the contest’s 6 a.m. deadline on Jan. 1 by an hour and a half.

As for a mother’s legal status, Mr. Pedersen added, “We wouldn’t have even thought of that.”

Richard writes to tell me that he is in Beijing, safe and sound, and that it’s not even too wretchedly cold, so I don’t know if he’s broken out the Mighty Parka or not. But because of the earthquake internet mess, he’s unable to access the site, either to post or to read.

So, here’s a shout out to any and all interested guest bloggers – I’m only good for a post every day or two, and that’s not going to keep the ducklings fed.

Besides, I want to see if anyone can top Dave’s ramen post and the comments it generated for the coveted “Most Beverages Snorted Through My Nose While Reading” award.

Yeah, another one of those “Cycle of Funk” articles, to quote davesgonechina…but here goes…

British writer Will Hutton began research for his upcoming book on China’s astounding economic and political rise believing that “China was so different that it could carry on adapting its model, living without democracy or European enlightenment values.” In the course of his research, he changed his mind. After detailing the staggering growth of China’s economy, the global reach of its political power, the abandonment of anything resembling Maoist doctrine, Hutton concludes:

But for all that, it remains communist. The maxims of Marxist-Leninst-Maoist thought have to stand, however much the party tries to stretch the boundaries, because they are the basis for one-party rule. Yet the system so spawned is reaching its limits. For example, China’s state-owned and directed banks cannot carry on channelling hundreds of billions of pounds of peasant savings into the financing of a frenzy of infrastructure and heavy industrial investment. The borrowers habitually pay interest only fitfully, and rarely repay the debt, even as the debt mountain explodes. The financial system is vulnerable to any economic setback.

Equally, China is reaching the limits of the capacity to increase its exports, which, in 2007, will surpass $1 trillion, by 25 per cent a year. At this rate of growth, they will reach $5 trillion by 2020 or sooner, representing more than half of today’s world trade. Is that likely? Are there ships and ports on sufficient scale to move such volumes – and will Western markets stay uncomplainingly open? Every year, it is also acquiring $200bn of foreign exchange reserves as it rigs its currency to keep its exports competitive. Can even China insulate its domestic financial system from such fantastic growth in its reserves and stop inflation rising? Already, there are ominous signs that inflationary pressures are increasing.

Hutton goes on to discuss China’s environmental crisis, which has been covered here on so many occasions that I don’t think it’s necessary to restate it now. His basic argument is that “it is the lack of independent scrutiny and accountability that lie behind the massive waste of investment and China’s destruction of its environment alike.”

Enterprises are accountable to no one but the Communist party for their actions; there is no network of civil society, plural public institutions and independent media to create pressure for enterprises to become more environmentally efficient. Watchdogs, whistleblowers, independent judges and accountable government are not just good in themselves as custodians of justice; they also keep capitalism honest and efficient and would curb environmental costs that reach an amazing 12 per cent of GDP. As importantly, they are part of the institutional network that constitutes an independent public realm that includes free intellectual inquiry, free trade unions and independent audit. It is this ‘enlightenment infrastructure’ that I regard in both the West and East as the essential underpinning of a healthy society. The individual detained for years without a fair trial is part of the same malign system that prevents a company from expecting to be able to correct a commercial wrong in a court, or have a judgment in its favour implemented, if it were against the party interest.

The impact is pernicious. The reason why so few Britons can name a great Chinese brand or company, despite China’s export success, is that there aren’t any. China needs to build them, but doing that in a one-party authoritarian state, where the party second-guesses business strategy for ideological and political ends, is impossible. In any case, nearly three-fifths of its exports and nearly all its hi-tech exports are made by non-Chinese, foreign firms, another expression of China’s weakness. The state still owns the lion’s share of China’s business and what it does not own, it reserves the right to direct politically.

Hutton believes that the world cannot afford a China that dominates the globe without achieving some form of democratic transformation. From what I can suss out about him, he’s no neocon; he’s also no cultural relativist and makes a strong case for the superiority – and universality – of Western enlightenment values, which he believes China desperately needs to achieve its stated “peaceful rise”:

Britain and the West take our enlightenment inheritance too easily for granted, and do not see how central it is to everything we are, whether technological advance, trust or well-being. We neither cherish it sufficiently nor live by its exacting standards. We share too quickly the criticism of non-Western societies that we are hypocrites. What China has taught me, paradoxically, is the value of the West, and how crucial it is that we practise what we preach. If we don’t, the writing is on the wall – for us and China.

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this. Nowhere in Hutton’s piece does he make a case that certain traditional Chinese values might be advantageous or even virtuous in the modern world (in fact, quite the opposite). I can’t help it – I’m a good liberal, and this makes me uncomfortable. I’d venture, a little tentatively, since this is only a small excerpt from a much longer work, that this lack and even downright dismissal of 5,000 years of cultural traditions somewhat undercuts Hutton’s larger argument.

I will say, however, that my first time in China, back in the beginning days of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, gave me an appreciation for the American Constitution, Bill of Rights and the rule of law that I’d never had before. And also, as Hutton states, the absolute necessity of following our own values.

As for China’s future, Hutton concludes:

My belief is that what is unsustainable is not sustained. Change came in the Soviet Union with the fifth generation of leaders after the revolution; the fifth generation of China’s leaders succeed today’s President Hu Jintao in 2012. No political change will happen until after then, but my guess is that sometime in the mid to late 2010s, the growing Chinese middle class will want to hold Chinese officials and politicians to account for how they spend their taxes and for their political choices. What nobody can predict is whether that will produce another Tiananmen, repression and maybe war if China’s communists pick a fight to sustain legitimacy at home or an Eastern European velvet revolution and political freedoms.

So what do you think?

UPDATE – okay, I’m a little embarrassed – Jeremiah posted about this guy before, which I only discovered because the Monster of Blogging Productivity that is China Law Blog just posted about this article too..

Momofuku Ando, inventor of instant ramen, has died. A Japanese hybrid of Godzilla and Ray Kroc, Momofuku’s Nissin Foods burst on the scene in 1958 with “Chikin Ramen” – as a luxury item, no less. Yes, those Cups O’ Noodles that fueled exam cramming or unemployment were considered Space Age food for a world that was so on the cusp of providing you a flying car, jetpack AND DisneyMars that you could taste it. And it tasted like “Chikin”, apparently.

Born in Taiwan with the name 吴百福, or Wu Baifu, Momofuku went to Japan when he was orphaned as a small child. His dream of creating an instant meal in a disposable cup has often been credited to his life growing up in wartime, but it might just as equally have been driven by a hatred of Japanese prison food when he served two years for tax evasion. Momofuku’s product was laughed at by a food industry full of snobby, cigar-chomping, poisonous-blowfish-sushi-eating elites who called it a novelty. But as his company, Nissin Foods, so rightly points out on his bio page:

“They had never been so wrong.”

The competition responded quickly, however, and the bloody Instant Ramen Wars have continued to the present day. Momofuku Ando was always at the front line, even getting his noodles into space, and Japanese Prime Ministers for years have gone to pay their respects at the Momofuku Ando Instant Ramen Museum, while the Chinese Foreign Ministry for years has demanded that, in the event that Momofuku wins the Nobel Peace Prize for his work, that it be rightfully identified as a Chinese Nobel Prize since he was born in Taiwan. While China produces half the worlds ramen, using 1/10 of its wheat, it still lags behind more developed nations in ramen consumption, an embarassing fourth after South Korea, Japan and Indonesia. This is partly blamed on Mao’s “Let One Hundred Kettles Whistle” Campaign, which ended up re-educating China’s ramen-enjoying population at Lanzhou Noodle Camps. Later, during the Great Leap Forward, ramen bricks were melted down having been mistaken for steel wool.

Chinese university students will be asked to put down their little plastic forks on Monday morning during a moment of silence for the man that has kept them from starving during their Gao Kao examinations, until the flag is lowered and the kettle whistles.

If you wish to take ramen in Ando’s honor, Ramenlovers.Blogspot.Com has been reviewing the noodle since late 2005.

Last night I hit a new record with 2.5 hours of sleep. I still haven’t processed it, that as of tomorrow night I’ll be living in Beijing. I haven’t felt this nervous in years. I’m still not sure exactly why.

Today a bunch of friends and clients from work are giving a party for me at the new Din Tai Feng (3pm if you’re around). I am now fully realizing just how much I will miss Taipei. What spectacular people, what a great place to live. What an amazing 1.3 years. Well, on to the next adventure. I am excited about it, but also apprehensive, more so than I’d expected. One slow step at a time. Takr a deep breath….

No, she isn’t. She is a power-drunk populist who can whip up the masses, generate blog and media storms, and ignite false memes that lead directly to action that is bad for everyone, though especially for the victims of her rage. Go here for the complete story. It is a superb indictment of the right-wing noise machine’s ability to spread blatant falsehoods and endanger innocent people’s lives. Money quote:

In other words, [Jamil] Hussein is being arrested only because Malkin and her cohorts raised a ruckus questioning his very existence. As Lindsay says, maybe she can interview Hussein in his jail cell while she’s there on her upcoming trip.

In other words, Malkin and her friends have successfully criminalized the flow of any information outside of official Iraqi channels.

Nice going, gang. I’m sure the reporters on the ground in Baghdad will thank you for that.

This masterpiece led me to another masterpiece with lots of black humor and juicy quotes that demonstrate the wingnuts’ utter lack of shame or morality. Follow the links…. And never tell me she’s just an ordinary blogger. True, she’s a blogger, but she’s also a menace to society and a quintessential demagogue.

Update: Purely hilarious. Oh, the power of irony. Now, if only the story were a bit less tragic….

Howard French has a new piece on the contradictions of modern China. These are all familiar themes, mostly of the “beneath the glittering surface lurk serious problems” variety, but French summarizes them well. The key graphs:

The intent here is not to slight China’s economic achievement, which in the past quarter-century has truly been all but miraculous. The point is to say that so much remains to be done here, including most of the hard work.

China’s outstanding tasks tend to be of the kind that evade quick and simple measurement and will certainly not loom large in the calculations of the graph paper and ruler gang.

The people who inhabit the world’s oldest unitary state have a common nationality, but they have yet to construct commonly held bonds of citizenship, which allow for the sharing of other people’s problems and of each other’s dreams.

The road thus far for China has been built on an official religion: the cult of GDP growth. China has built roads and buildings in dizzying quantities. And at the individual level, Chinese people are acquiring things just as fast as they can, but there seems to be little other rhyme or reason to life here for the time being.

The predominant reason for this is the government, which reserves for itself the right to proclaim causes and strikes down anyone who insists on articulating a different agenda too loudly. Similarly, it tightly controls the right of association, meaning that any group of any size must be organized under the government’s aegis.

The result is an atrophied sense of the individual and of civic participation, from which the country and its people are just now awakening, and not a moment too soon.

Sounds about right to me.

I’m off, yet again. Not sure when I’ll be back, maybe not until next week when I’m back in China. Stay tuned.