General Chat

Jim, half the people in this country don't know where fareham in Hampshire is sow hat chance is there for a foreign call centre. I lost count of the number of times people (including the post office pre post codes) thought I lived in Farnham! Ann Glos

Grampa Jim , I take it you have not heard about the number of police forces that are going to merg, it is so they can contract the 999 calls to a call centre in outer mongolia Roy

Same problem in New Zealand. Most of our banks are foreign owned. But the last Govt set up a Kiwi Bank to keep a minor party happy. One of the other parties has said it will sell it 'when' they are in power. Our 'Auckland Savings Bank' that I have always banked with since childhood is now Australian owned and called ASB Bank, so what does the B in ASB stand for? Perhaps ASB means All Stupid B.......s. Am I allowed to say that?

It says a lot about the shift in power from Customer to Provider. If they really valued our calls they would answer them. A friend was stuck in a lift the other day and the emergency phone was answered by someone in a foreign call centre who didn't recognise the places Fareham or Hampshire and put the phone down on her. Fat chance we would have if all our 999 calls were re-routed.

The problem is that you can only transfer your account to another bank whose calls centre is overseas. There;s no guarantee either that your bank won't be taken over by another bank with an overseas calls centre. I HATE these places. Years ago you rang up and held on for ages whilst nothing happened. Now you ring up and have to choose Option 5 or whatever (having had to listen to the other 4 options) and then they play some awful synthetic music, but instead of letting it wash you into a sense of relaxation, they interrupt every other bar to say 'We are sorry we cannot connect you at present as all our operators are busy [having to sort out other mistakes we made earlier with their accounts]. Please hold on as your call is important to us' Yeah, right!

I think I read the same article as Winter Drawers. It said that the computer is set up so no one can print anything from it. How do we know that, there are some clever people around who may be able to get around this. Sue

Read an article over the last couple of days in which at least 84% of people polled said that their bank etc didn't listen to them regarding their concerns. Some people have even after years transferred their accounts to companies/banks who are still in the UK. Typical. Maybe when enough people transfer their accounts elsewhere they may wake up. We can't control the scams here so what chance have we overseas when their data protection might be non existent. Just had two calls within the last 20mins. Knew they were overseas because of the delay. Just left them hanging. Grandad might just have been right in keeping his savings under the floor boards!

Hi I work for a company that has call centres overseas. The company sees it as a good thing & say they have not had many complaints. Thing is we get complaints when the calls get through to us but as the customers don't take it further nothing gets done . So my advise is put your complaint in writing - the more this happens the more the companies must listen!! Penny

My friend had to make a claim on her insurance. The call centre was in India. They asked her if she had notified the police which she answered yes. What number did you use for the police they asked, 999 she said, no that can't be right there are no numbers with just 3 digits it must be at least 11. She tried to explain that 999 was the emergency number, but no they wouldn't continue with the conversation until she had given them the right number!!!!! After three such phone calls, she eventually got through to a call centre in Scotland. Sue

i wouldn'n mind if they could actually pronounce my name i get Mrs Far thing so i hang up Bev

Like everything else 'someone' will have 'undertaken extensive research' and their 'customers' will have voted 'overwhelmingly' for call centres to be moved abroad, face to face customer service to be discontinued and people would have been shown to 'prefer' to talk to some ill trained,impersonal 'customer service advisor' rather than nip down your local branch. And that will never take into account the implication of fraud or scams! Mags xx

I find this so much a potential fraud scam area that I will change my bank if it goes overseas. Companies/banks who are doing this are not listening to their customers. People power or just lie down and take it? Any views.