I have to deal with a lot of Indian tech support in the capacity of my job, like a lot of other people, and I have to say that when I get a non Indian, I cheer up immeasurably. It actually doesn't even have to be a person whose native language is English. He or she can be Hispanic or Eastern European or pretty much anything else and we can pretty much understand each other. People from India either don't learn understandable English, or their language is so alien to English that it doesn't translate well. Some of them speak so poorly that you have to hold your breath to catch every nuance of their monotone way of speaking. Too many of them speak without emotion, and they don't seem to understand your own emotions in the way you talk to them. Nor are they very pleased when you say, over and over, "Can you repeat that?" I recall once when I told a woman that I'd have to hang up on her as I didn't understand a word she was saying, and she said the first word I actually understood: "OK". Lastly, I think that's why they excel at those spelling bee type competitions: they learn these words by seeing them in rote memory, without really understanding how to pronounce them. So king hell at spelling and seeing the word; piss poor at pronouncing it. Too much of one thing at the expense of the other.
These companies don't seem to fathom how much time and money they lose by these hiring practices. A quick painless 5 minute phone call for help turns into an irritating 45 minute bummer.
