Who thought of that?!?!

I want to know who the brainiac was that thought that outsourcing Customer Service calls to other countries was a good idea????

A few weeks ago we were traveling and due to a family emergency needed to extend our rental car contract and change the city of return. Since the company doesn't believe in giving you the actual number for the place you rented it (also not smart), you get to call this centralized number...and talk with someone across the world. So my sweet husband calls to try and make the arrangements. In trying to give the reference number to the the customer service agent , he keeps hearing "I could not hear(aka:understand) you, please repeat your reference number." Although we are southerners, our accents are slight and besides the occasional "darlin'', "y'all", "sweetie", and "fix'n to" we are pretty understandable and relatively loud. At the very least, a series of 6 numbers pronounced slowly and deliberately is clearly delivered. After about 6 rounds of this, with each round getting a few decibels louder since the rep says he can't make it out, my hubby is eventually out on the porch slowly yelling the numbers to improve the man's ability to hear. To which the rep says "I'm sorry you are upset and I can't help you" and HANGS UP on my husband. Nice. After approximately 4 different calls to the centralized number and multiple people who couldn't figure it out from some level or another (didn't seem to get the difference between Greenville, NC and Greenville, SC for instance), he eventually found someone who seemed to help him. Unfortunately, there were still issues when he went to return the car that had to ironed out with the person there.

Thus my question... Who thought this would be a good idea!?!?! People calling customer service lines to adjust reservations usually have some sort of issue. Since they are having problems and would therefore be more prone to frustration, why would it be logical to bring in a language barrier, distance, and lack of local geographic understanding. This makes no sense to me. Plus, hanging up on the customer seems contradictory to the basic premise of customer service.