Aetna is prolly the worst offender of the lot
Posted on 11/28/2013 8:38:36 AM PST by steelhead_trout
Many people feel strongly about not shopping on Thanksgiving. Well, I have a cause of my own. Not doing business with any company that offshores its call centers. After dealing with some script-reading cretin out in God-Knows-Where because Old Navy's online credit card payment isn't working, I've decided that enough is enough. With so many Americans out of work, businesses should set up call centers here in the USA, not in some Third World slum half a world away. This may not be PC, but we all know it's true.
“We have been justifying offshoring now for an entire generation.”
The economics is what justifies offshoring. Unless we can make it economically viable to justify hiring Americans to do these jobs, it won’t ever happen.
“How about changing the regulatory climate in the US, so business COULD operate profitably in the US?”
And we should, but it’s not that simple. We would still need to find slave laborers in order to compete.
Aetna is prolly the worst offender of the lot
Better yet, make it a law for every business, regardless of its size, increase its workforce by 20%. That should help take care of the unemployment problem, and stimulate the economy..........
My idea is just as stupid as yours......
Ridiculous.
I’ve spoken to the American call center reps and they are as worse than the ones from India.
“I’m with you. That’s one of the reasons I quit dealing with Dell years ago. I either would get “Steve” in New Delhi,”
My frat buddy from univ works with Dell. The sales are all based in Texas and you will be speaking to an American. Once you buy the laptop or pc, you are now relegated to the 1st tier dimwits of the call center and the system randomly picks around the world which csr is free. Mostly, the system picks overseas.
Just like HP, the only time you speak to an American at Dell is if you purchase the business models or buy the upgrade models. It is what it is. Always have 2 or more backup laptops handy. Once you send the laptop back to manufacturer, you can use the others. Believe me, I learned my lesson well.
I have an unrequited love affair with Diane from Adelaide, who has pulled my cyber-beans from the fire more than once. She's probably a 60-year-old grandmother in reality, but to me she's a 6-foot beach babe in a bikini with a 200 IQ. What is that language she's speaking, though?
If I pick up the phone and there’s some stuttering ‘Delhi clerk’ on the other end, I just hang up.
I don’t agree.
Modern factories are almost fully CHINESE.
Bring back American factories. Now.
There is a lot of understandable frustration and American pride evidenced in the comments thus far. There has also been some abysmal ignorance shown and illogical statements made.
I once visited half a dozen Indian companies looking for a suitable partner in an offshore project with the American company which employed me. Our NY headquarters were going to move ALL of our jobs to Mexico as a “cost cutting measure”. My department developed a solution that retained our US employees and increased productivity by utilizing an Indian data services company.
A couple of the Indian companies I investigated also provided call center services for US clients. The best of these were like a very enthusiastic, hard studying college campus. Very impressive! The company we settled on was more software development oriented. Extremely competent people. I probably was not qualified to work there.
Patriotic Americans need to realize that in terms of cost, effort applied and productivity, American labor currently is not competitive on a global scale. Part of the problem is the accretion of government regulations that require American business to spend more in satisfying government paperwork then on productivity.
Part of the problem is in the union inspired attitude of “I deserve a paycheck which is independent of my value to the company or the customer”.
If you are connected to a call center representative who is unintelligible or ignorant, then by all means, go to another company to buy your item next time. Yes, it is frustrating to get someone who is reading from a script, does not understand your problem and is unable to help you. However, have you ever dealt with a US, in-store tech rep whose solution to ALL computer problems was “Format the hard drive and reinstall the OS and all programs.” Especially when the idiot did it without asking you first.
Competence costs money. US computer competence costs 3 to 10 times the equivalent Indian computer competence. Yes, sometimes the accents are terrible. Many American also have serious difficulty understanding regional accents different than their own. And then there is Ebonics...
We would like to demand Made in The USA on all products... except when they are “sophisticated European (perfume, sports cars, suits, leather goods, etc)” or fruits and vegetables that are either out of season or just don’t grow in the USA. Then we can relax our patriotism a bit.
We need to force the politicians to cut away the piles of idiotic EPA, OSHA, FDA, ADA, EEOC, etc. regulation that impede American business. We need to knock American labor leaders up side of the head with a 2x4, get their attention and get them to cooperate with business to make “Made in America” become the symbol of quality and value to all customers: American, German, Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian, Swedish...
Forget the crabs-in-a-bucket mentality of class warfare trumpeted by the Socialist, communists, labor unions, Democrats, media, Hollywood, liberal academia. Let’s build better products & give better service, then watch the customers come to our door.
Multi-national corporations don’t care about Americans, they care about profit and money. This is the economic system ‘we’ have chosen.
India, for the average Indian, is a hellhole. Per capita GDP is $3,000 a year. Per capita GDP in the U.S. is around $50,000. The eagerness you noticed was actually desperation and apparently you feel the U.S. should follow this model.
There is no way the U.S. can compete on those terms. There is no way the global economy can function with countries competing on those terms. With the U.S. sucking up excess global demand on their credit card/equity loan while losing middle class jobs. The financial crisis in 2008 was largely about this and zero has been done about it. This means the next crisis will be even worse.
If we don’t start finding ways to create more jobs for Americans, the economy is going to collapse anyway.
Business needs customers. This country is short 10-20 million jobs right now.
It is desperately short of good jobs.
Right now 70% of jobs being created pay 30K/yr or less.
Have you been shopping in (any) America store recently?
Everything is made in China.
While incidentally, China keeps getting to be a stronger potential opponent. And richer. And in control of ever more of America’s former manufacturing base. Now making aircraft carriers, and enjoying an ever-growing national trade SURPLUS.
A whole signicant portion of which, comes right back here to America. Benefiting absolutely no Americans.
Bring back manufacturing to America. Stop sending jobs to China.
A whole signicant portion of which, comes right back here to America. Benefiting absolutely no Americans.
Bring back manufacturing to America. Stop sending jobs to China.
Can I inject a little reality here. A good rule of thumb is that cost of manufacturing any item is ~10% of the retail sales price.
That covers transportation, wholesaler's cost & profit, distribution, retailer's costs and profit, etc.
Aside from manufacturing and initial transport to the US, which might total 20% of the cost of the item, the rest is spent in the US and stays right here. The people selling Kia autos in the US are living in the US, pay taxes here, and are paid here. Same for the mechanics, the guy who delivers parts, the construction workers who built the building, and so on down the line. Sure, I would rather see people buy cars made in the US, but when our government and the UAW drive them out of business, there are still a lot of American jobs associated with cars made overseas. It is the same for everything else.
Not exactly.
Kia’s are Korean.
You are completely ignoring that Korea owns them.
Sure if you own a Kia which is produced in America, you support American manufacturing.
Buying an American car, would benefit American production, and also keeps up American ownership of production.
Is your Kia made in America?
But even then, factories of the future will not employee many people directly...they will be fully automated.
“We need to change our laws, to encourage jobs right here.”
I agree with that — make it a better business climate and there will be more businesses, who employ more people.
Obamacare and the EPA rules aren’t helping — and that’s an understatement.
What kind of factories are you calling for? Modern factories or the kind of factories that existed in the industrial revolution (which employed humans rather than robots)?
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