Over the last couple weeks (a holiday here, but not where the call centers are), I've had a wave of big companies have problems. With each of them, I expected the usual call in to support to fix the problem and get the charges removed and such. Each time, I was sent to support centers located in India, and with each one, they absolutely refused to do anything to help me. We've all dealt with this before, but they were much more resistant than normal. Then I started asking for escalations, they absolutely refuse to escalate you above a "supervisor" now (for those who don't know, that's code for just pulling in another one of the same T1 support people at a lot of places). Everything up till now is excusable as "failing tech giant has nonexistent customer service". So my wife, who is from southeast Asia and still speaks broken English, takes over these conversations, and one by one I watch as they issue us full refunds for things the moment they find out there somebody at this end that isn't American who stands to benefit. Every single mobile phone provider contacts out their customer support to these places. Most internet providers do. Most online retailers do. This has moved beyond what i can write off as just a poor incentive structure. We're being charged a tax for being American, by vital infrastructure companies. TL;DR; Questions: * Has anybody else noticed any similar changes in customer service? * At what point do we consider our own infrastructure handing out refunds exclusively to foreign nationals a national security problem or an illegal scam? * Can we bar at least mobile and internet companies from outsourcing customer service since it's presently being abused? * Wasn't there some big world event last year that left tons of Americans unemployed?