I'm not really sure why, but that's how it is. With a few exceptions, the norm is to get a shit show every time something is outsourced to a team in India or China.
It is simply very hard to 'care' under the circumstances outlined above. And it is very hard to write quality code when they don't care.
Absolute numbers, not relative. Discount team doesn't really need to care about your problems.
It was a combination of a culture that valued quantity over quality & long hours, management and time zones. When some staff moved over to the US office they got better. Mostly because they realized that the work style in the USA is much nicer as an employee than the one in China.
I had a much better experience later with contractor eastern european teams, who came from the start caring about quality. I didn't have to fight a cultural mismatch. I know other people have had issues with EE teams, but nothing is perfect.
I was a jr engineer back then, so I didn't have much power to change it. I eventually left for other reasons.
btw, I've seen the same thing with code in the US that is done by an outside team, it's just not as good as the stuff that you're gonna see internally.
No, it's that an outsourcing company makes money on billable hours. If you can bill the client for fixing bugs, then why would you care about introducing them in the first place?