I do have to say after working in the NOC for over 17 years and still gainfully employed at this time I would have to say that I think the whole offshore thing is a disaster. I can recall calling CISCO or HP or one the other big vendors and getting a real subject matter expert who would work with me to resolve a problem in a timely and organized fashion. Today I get people on the phone who have never even bothered to read the whole TAC case file or if they did they have a short term memory issue. I now spend more time fiddling with serial numbers callback numbers and restating the same facts over and over again to every level of support specialist I have to go through to reach a resolution. I get cases closed as soon as I am shipped a part and nobody even knows if that is the true issue yet. I have had cases where I had production servers rebooting multiple times in a 24 hour peroid and it has taken weeks of shipping log files upgrading BIOS and driver files for everything even remotely close to the system in question only to be told it is a known problem but there is no available solution at this time or be told there is nothing wrong it must be a software problem.
Or to have a specialist who is WAY over their head and refuses to hand the case to another more qualified person and keeps on insisting that I do totally disruptive actions even though just a small amount of critical thinking would exclude the solution they are touting.
It may cost less but I am getting WAY less for the money and the hidden costs are staggering!!