I've had mixed results with presumably offshore tech support. I say, "presumably" because it's hard to know if the Indian accent I'm hearing is coming from Bangalor, India or Boulder, Colorado. In any case I have had the tech support for a wireless router I was trying to set up not only know what Linux was, but actually have helpful advice. In another case, with Veritas software (now part of Symantec), they have some sort of "rolling tech support" such that you get a technical person in one of several call centers around the world depending on time of day. It was only when I got the Indian support center that the problem got solved quickly and easily.
On the other hand, I have placed tech support calls and gotten someone I could barely understand, and with clearly limited knowledge of the product.
It seems that if you pay the offshore folks a little more you can get better results. At least, I am guessing that the good results I have had were due to companies not going *too* cheap.
Bill Ranck Blacksburg, Va.