The moment one of those problems isn't resolved promptly it will be. I like the products, within reason, and I like the assurance that I will be taken care of after sales. The only problem is there is no Apple store in either Dubai or Singapore, so in the case of the earphones I had a trip to Paris coming up, and in the case of the phone I had to ship it to a friend in the US.

At least most airlines still deal with their premium customers through a local call center, and only the status-less people are redirected to the Indian call centre or whatever. Banks, on the other hand, want even their premium customers to deal with outsourced call centers. Funny story - we wanted to set up an account overseas with our existing bank, and someone calls up from the call centre to ask if we had an existing account with the bank!