Bloody call centres

Going to have a bit of a rant this evening I'm afraid, having spent much of the afternoon on the phone to overseas call centres whose staff have an inability to understand what I was trying to find out!
It's all to do with a nice digital radio that I was given as my birthday present 18 months or so ago. I'd asked for one specifically to put in my (then) new kitchen, so that I could listen to it whilst cooking, but after receiving said radio from my parents, I found that the reception in the kitchen was rubbish and I couldn't get any channels. I was rather annoyed, but thought that after I'd done the decorating upstairs I'd be able to find a suitable home for it, so it has been sitting on my sideboard ever since. Last week I decided to finally move it into my bedroom to replace an old clock-radio, and it seemed to be ok (apart from the digital reception still being temperamental, but I assumed that was just due to my house maybe being in a blackspot).
Anyway, there was a power cut yesterday and ever since, the radio appears to have died. Although the screen comes on with the power, it won't display anything, it won't switch off, and if I turn it on and off I can sometimes get it to make a weird wailing noise as if it's trying to tune in to something like an ET-phone-home situation (or should that be BT phone home?) I was rather narked, as these radios aren't cheap, and it's only been used for about 10 days so even though it's out of warranty time-wise, I think it needs mending.
So I called the helpline who in fact couldn't help, and told me to call BT which is where the foreign call centre fiasco began. None of the automated options sounded appropriate, so initially I tried the faults department and explained the situation. Bloke had no idea probably what a digital radio was and asked me several times for the phone number of the problem line, so I have up and tried the trick of calling again and not pressing any buttons to see if I could get through to general customer services. Which kind of worked, apart from I got a woman who also did not have any understanding of the problem (ie where can I get an authorised repairer), so I gave up. I know they are only trying to do their job but I have a real problem with companies sticking their call centres where they can exploit the cheaper labour, it's not fair on the foreigners or the customers as all I wanted was some advice. So I'm going to try emailing them. Reason for making a fuss is that when the sound on my TV (2.5 years old at the time and also out of warranty) broke a couple of years back, I complained and quoted the sale of goods act that says that goods have to be fit for purpose for a reasonable length of time, and that I didn't believe that 2.5 years was reasonable given that the TV was quite expensive. So Philips arranged for it to be taken to one of their repairers, and after the dodgy part had been found, they replaced the part for free (saving me 80 quid) and I only had to pay for the labour. Result!
I'll let you know if I can manage the same thing again...