Call centre frustration

You're probably getting to be a rare person if you've never had to deal with a supposed "customer service" (note the irony of the quotes) representative in a call centre located a million miles and a cultural galaxy away from you. Some of the most frustrating hours of my life have been spent trying to find someone who actually spoke a modicum of English and who understood my problem. So I identified with David Armstrong in his account of trying to get an online computer supplier to sort out his order. This is an instructive tale of woe. But I can't understand why a computer expert (Armstrong was formerly the computer editor at The Press in Christchurch) would bother to buy online, when he could have got as good a deal by shopping around local suppliers, with on-hand customer support. My experience of shopping around locally has been excellent (admittedly it helps that I speak a bit of Chinese, but it's not the deciding factor).