I called C&S help last week sometime to ask about selecting Flat Rate Boxes, because a week or so earlier, there was a drop-down where you could select the size of Flat Rate Box you wanted - and it had now disappeared. Seems it had gone back to the original where you have to type in the box code.
Nevertheless, it was during this conversation, when I was wearing my IT hat, when it was revealed that programming of the Australia Post site was done in-house ... and that it was, on the whole, very well done. Click and Send, however, had been done externally. When I hear things like that, the word 'Outsourced' comes screaming out of the sky at me.
From my experience, outsourcing is getting someone else to do the work, based on price, where the quality of the work is a lottery - often reflecting the skill of the salesperson more than the programmers. Please understand, this criticism of outsourcing is not a global one - but there are sufficient example in the programming sphere to warrant extreme caution ... IMHO.
