It’s one thing to outsource tech support to reps whose English is less than stellar. It’s quite another thing to want to charge customers for them to get the same North American support team whenever they call in with an issue during their warranty period.

Umm, when exactly did this become a premium service as they’re calling it. Is it too much to ask to be connected to someone who speaks clear and concise English, who can solve the issue and not always read from a pre-made script?

The only upside to this is forcing consumers to build their own and with the number of quality sites out there offering step by step tutorials, it doesn’t make sense to not build your own. Not only do you get control of the quality of the parts inside your computer, you can add as much as you like now knowing you can always add more later on down the road. Most Dell’s use proprietary hardware which makes this virtually impossible, although they have acquiesced recently and begun to use industry standard parts – power supplies most notably.
And should something go wrong with your build, there are a ton of forums to go to with more than enough people willing to help you out.

For free.