Is it just me that gets annoyed by call centres being shipped out to India???

I recently moved from HSBC as they shipped customer services to India. I transferred all my accounts to Lloyds TSB and they promised they had no plans to send calls out of the UK, yet I phoned today and found they have.

Does anyone know a bank that has strong intentions to keep their staff employed in the UK?

Rick

Try First Direct.

Well I like speaking to Indians, they are delightful, but surely there are enough in the UK to avoid moving call centres to India.

No really that is not correct. In India they are quite well paid relatively at present, as far as current Indian pay rates generally are. Many of the people working in Indian call centres are actually Indian graduates. India has not yet suffered the civilisation economy overhead decline!

What most people in the UK and much of the rest of the West do not any longer understand is this economic delusion cycle of so-called modern civilisation. What happens is that initially as modern countries become civilised they industrialise and capitalise. At the start costs are relatively low, because tax overheads are low, housing costs are low, living costs are low etc. Companies can invest and generate good returns on their investment. Then as the economy becomes more successful unions clamour for more and more pay; they want to live to the same standards as the managers and industrialists, but without investing any capital and without taking any business risks. Then they clamour for a Welfare state, sickness benefits, unemployment benefit, child benefits, tax credits, state pensions etc. So they elect a different government that will give them these, but without explaining the real costs and eventual effects on their National economy.

Gradually the whole of their economy grids to a halt, because it can no longer compete globally. It has become encumbered with enormous tax overheads which have to be paid from somewhere - and these have become a millstone around the neck of that economy.

So global business moves its capital and wealth-generating activity to a country or region which is "emergent". That means that that region does not yet have these debilitating tax overheads, which make it impossible for business to generate an adequate return on investment.

Ultimately the countries and regions which had developed and adopted the wonderful Welfare state systems become the "banana republics" and their economies collapse. It is all a bit like Orwell's "Animal Farm" but in a slightly different way.

So India at present is a relatively low cost area to which many companies are moving various operations like call centres and software development. But watch what happens; gradually their costs will rise and they will go through this same cycle. Then it will become too costly to run these operations there and global businesses will move their operations to other lower cost areas. This is the cycle. Look at what happened in Japan after the last world war. It is now too expensive in Japan to undertake most business activities. Those which were vibrant and profitable there have for the most part now moved elsewhere. This is the pattern of unrealism in the world, and it is this which is exploited by Politicians to fool the people into believing that they can all live like the millionaires, if only the people vote for their party!

Hi richyrich,

Now that is interesting about MBNA. I have been with MBNA for years and have several of their credit cards. I have never yet been routed in any calls via India so far. Is this a recent change, or is it just some of their calls which are routed to India?

How is that I have not been routed via any of these ever then Rich? I have been an MBNA customer for over 10 years.

mc661 wrote on Oct 11^th, 2005 at 10:40pm:


Yes they arepart of HSBC but both their call centres are in the UK,and they dont mind if you call their geo num for overseas callers unlike some other bankers we know of.

dorf wrote on Nov 17^th, 2005 at 4:15pm:


As I'm not an employee of MBNA (but did used to work for Abbey, who MBNA run the credit cards for) I'm not able to give you a decisive reason why you personally have never been routed to India (maybe you could ask them?). Maybe you've been lucky - as I have said they do have call staff in the UK and it could be luck taht you haven't been routed there. I also have no idea how many staff are in India in terms of numbers or proportions.

Just because you've never been routed to them doesn't mean tht they don't exist