Call centers are cost centers

Call centers are cost centers. Support is part of the purchase cost and with razor thin margins, you can only get bottom support.
Compound the low pay with the high technical expectations and you get a recipe for a disaster. Doing it over the phone makes it even worse. In summary, PCs are complex, the customers are for the most part not very good with it to start with, problems can be very complex, interface is so rich that it is difficult to describe over the phone and tech level needs to be high to diagnose problems when the pay needs to be low to keep margins.

It is an impossible situation. In a few years (yeah, right...), with more savvy customers and maybe video conferencing, you may reach a point where you can diagnose remotely. Or remote access to the computer (hello, security breach). For those of you that have had the pleasure to diagnose computer problems remotely for your family, you know what i am talking about. This is what the people on the other end of the phone face every day...