I've been working with Filipinos my entire life including six years as a Reactor Operator in the USN. They are competent folks with a work ethic you have to see to believe. Better pick another 3rd World Nation for your tech support whipping boy.

This isn't a dig on Filipinos but a dig on companies that use tech support people who speak little English. In the Philippines, India, wherever. My recent favorites are the ones I recently dealt with in Eastern Europe (with a rather Eastern European expectation for things to not work so well -- suck it, lady), with names like "Steve."

My own recent dealing with a tech support lady in the Philippines was hellish. The yoga pants I wear when I'm writing at home had gotten threadbare and they had a sale on them at Victoria's Secret. I'd bought them in maybe 1995, and needed some information on which ones to order now. The woman was INCOMPETENT, unable to speak English understandably, and every piece of information she gave me, pretty much, was wrong. Luckily, when they sent me some ugly bra instead of one of the pairs of pants I'd ordered, I got a highly competent, pleasant, helpful American woman who spoke English and rather articulately. I got off the phone feeling good and helped -- so much so that I wrote a note to VS telling them what a helpful employee she was vis a vis the outsourced lady I'd spoken to before.

Companies lose a lot of goodwill by hiring tech support people who can't speak the language and really don't know what they're talking about. I think a DISH tech support person told me I shouldn't even have "House" because I didn't subscribe to a sports package. (It's a medical show, not "House Of Football"!)

All they need to know in English are two phrases:

"Is it plugged in?" and "Have you tried rebooting?"