Sir Spamalot wrote:
On Tue, 06 Jul 2004 18:16:27 -0400, Harry Krause
wrote:

Gould 0738 wrote:

You think Dell's going to find people in Texas who
are fluent in English and will work for $5.75 per hour?

$1 per hour is the going rate for English speaking help in India or the
Phillipines.

'Course you can halfway live on $40 a week in some places. In Texas, that 40
bucks would fill your gas tank, buy you a six pack, and leave enough left over
for a corn dog. Every week.

Are you kidding? You'd also be able to rent a cardboard box in which to
live and buy bullets for your gun.

I had a "delightful" encounter with two customer service women in the
Phillipines today. Both of them lied to me when I asked where they were
located, and tried to claim they were in the United States. They were in
Manilla. Their English was awful, the phone connection was lousy, and
the only "answers" they had came off a script. It's not their fault; I'm
sure they were told to lie about their location, on pain of losing their
crappy jobs. Well, more of my business they are not getting. I see no
reason to pay premium prices for goods and services "backed up" by
incompetent companies "offshore" who do it on the cheap and don't bother
to hire decent help or provide the necessary training.

There should be a backlash to this among Americans. It's really not a
political issue, or it shouldn't be. Middle-class Anericans and those
striving to reach the middle class should be absolutely opposed to the
transfer of American jobs to ports of cheap labor.


How many letters have you sent to the company, copying your
senators/congressman/representatives/state senators at the same time?

I bet none.



As a matter of fact, I sent a hard copy paper letter off today to the
CEO of that company, which is based in Maryland, and I cc'd the governor
and my local US representative. The governor, however, is a Republican,
and unlikely to give a tinker's dam, if it means interfering with a
corporation's hiring practices.

Further, I do whatever I can to encourage others I encounter in
appropriate settings to dump companies who have moved their call centers
to cheap labor markets and in the process cause Americans to lose their
jobs. My contract with my cell carrier of about seven years is up, and I
am not renewing, because it has moved its CS to India and since it has
done that, the CS has gone right down the toilet.

More and more health insurance companies are offshoring their claims
departments. It is hard to imagine something worse than trying to deal
with a human automaton in India who cannot deviate from the script of
customer dissatisfaction.