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Travel Weekly Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) The bubble will burst this year for travel companies outsourcing call centres to India, recruitment chiefs have predicted. Problems with language, customer service and call handling are forcing companies to think again about using cheap labour for activities such as sales calls. AA Appointments managing director John Tolmie said: "It makes sense to have back office and ticketing in India if you want low skills and the numbers, but the British public are put off by people trying to sell them something from overseas. You do not get the levels of service you expect....

Mike McPhate wrote a story for Newsday on Wednesday that made me wince, because it revealed how at least a fraction of the hostility that America receives from the rest of the world may be justified. The reporter, in New Delhi, discussed the picture of bigoted Americans that forms for Indians who answer the phone at a call center in Noida or Hyderabad. The story opens with an anecdote from a 22-year-old woman named Debalina Das, who worked on a tech line for four months before quitting. One American caller told her: "You Indian slut, in some (expletive) Third World...

NEW DELHI (AFP) - Shyam Mehra, 26, hates it when the Americans call him Sam. He hates it even more when his boss calls him Sam too. ADVERTISEMENT Get Our Top 20® Newsletter in Your Inbox Each Week! The Most "WOW!" Travel Deals on the Internet - here's a sampling: Released DEC 21, 2005 Fly to San Diego from Across the U.S. $34-$99 Major Airlines Florida 1-Bedroom Condo at 50% OFF $99 Barefoot Beach Resort 7-Night Caribbean Cruise in Peak Season $449 Fare Deals Los Cabos All-Inclusive Vacation at 4-Star Resort $599 CheapCaribbean.com Click on Any Deal and Check Them...

BOWIE, Md. - From her home office in the suburbs, Susan Smith is part of a growing movement that may help stem the flow of American jobs to low-cost Asia. Within a decade, some 3.3 million service-sector jobs will be offshored, or shipped to countries with low labor costs, according to a projection by Forrester Research, a consulting firm. But Smith is part of a parallel movement called "homeshoring." Instead of moving offshore, call-center jobs like hers are going to home-based U.S. workers, and software programming jobs are moving to low-cost U.S. metro areas such as Oklahoma City or rural...

It’s an industry that’s getting the cash registers ringing and presenting India as the back office headquarters of the world. It’s also the industry that mostly employs jumpity post-adolescents who, a decade ago, would have either been part of the odd market survey team trying to check how much consumption interest there is in a to-be-launched lipstick, or would have been whiling away their time until they got married or a job, whichever came hurtling first. So it’s not Reliance or Infosys, but it’s a job that we apparently do well and, believe it or not, it’s work that a...

Abuse from British and American customers is driving increasing numbers of Indian call centre workers from their jobs, defeated by the strain of handling persistent rudeness. Irate customers was cited as one of the main industry stress factors in a recent survey of call centre staff and some organisations have begun employing psychiatrists and counsellors to help employees to cope. 'I've had people tell me, "Back off, Paki, and don't call me again", said Eugene, 27, whose former employer, Spectrumind, provided an accounts services for BT. 'There was a lot of racist abuse once people detected from our accents that...

MUMBAI: "Q: I'm curious as to what kind of responses you have been getting. Do you use curse words at them? A: I made an Indian woman cry and promise to quit her job in 60 seconds. You can do it too!" This is only a random (and printable) selection from the thousands of messages in cyberspace calling for a campaign to harass Indian call centre operators, to put an end to the offshoring of jobs. The same person goes on to describe some more of his experiences while calling these call centres, an activity to which he promises to...

Airlines have resorted to charging travelers for meals, paper tickets and extra luggage to bolster their sagging bottom lines. Now, Delta Air Lines is pondering a new twist: charging a fee to send your call to a reservations agent in the United States instead of a call center in India. Delta first floated the idea in an online survey of select frequent fliers this month. The airline hasn't tabulated the survey results, let alone decided on imposing the new fee, said spokeswoman Meaghan Glynn. "We look into a lot of initiatives and ask a lot of questions," she said. "If...

The Democrat Party has gotten into the credit card business. Partnered with Providian Bank, the Democratic National Committee has been sending out unsolicited pre-approved credit card offers that help funnel money into DNC coffers. Many Republicans have gotten these offers and no doubt had a good chuckle. The solicitation, signed by DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe, states that using the card helps fund Democrat candidates in upcoming elections. McAuliffe also urges potential customers that by using the card they can to help defeat President George W. Bush. One of the primary complaints Democrats have leveled at the President is the charge...

<p>When low-income Arizonans report problems with their welfare payments or food stamps, they call a toll-free number provided by the state.</p> <p>A helpful person in India or Mexico answers.</p> <p>Under a seven-year contract totaling $30 million, calls from Arizona go either to an automated answer line, where most questions are resolved without human intervention, or to call centers abroad, where low-wage labor cuts the cost of providing live responses.</p>

Title: "US Firms That Outsource are Traitors: Kerry" Outsourcing of hi-tech jobs to India, China, Russia, the Philippines, and elsewhere has become an issue which is being debated in the Democratic primaries and in the US Congress, with current Democratic frontrunner in the presidential race, Senator John Kerry, calling companies which outsource 'Benedict Arnolds.' The name refers to an American 'traitor' who defected from the ranks of American revolutionaires to join the British colonists. Kerry was quoted by Contra Costa Times on the West Coast as denouncing the Bush Administration for 'rewarding Benedict Arnold CEOs who move profits and...

effects of internet and globalization!! If you own stock in these companies,your getting rich from using 3d world ,actors, imposters, as US-Canada faces the worst job loss recession since WW 2....Call centers are the fastest growing employers in urban India.! >>> Rekha Malhotra is tall, slim and extremely self-assured. She has never been to America. Yet for the last five months, she has spent 10 hours every day as 'Candy,' a resident of Orange County, California, talking about the weather there and selling satellite television packages to North Americans.

Canadian prisoners will have to find other ways to gain job skills after the government canceled a call center program that featured inmates pitching holiday time shares to U.S. residents over the telephone. The government scrapped the program after an external review raised concerns -- and eyebrows -- about security and privacy issues