More redundancies
 

All E-Contact staff at the ex-Telewest centre in Liverpool have been given their 30 days notice. This includes the technical support staff that work the groups for broadband-TV-Phone. The redundancies also include 6 members of the quality team who monitor calls for customer satisfaction

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gary thats a shame mate. but then thats how modern business works, for the wage they pay at 'pool they can get 4 agents in India.

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From what i know this is only the *start of the redundancies to come.

*shrug* VM dont care about their staff though.

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Unfortunately your probably right DocDutch, but its so short sighted, anybody who has had dealings with the Indian call center will know that they are normally very polite, but just read from a card a list of pre-aranged answers, its very infuriating, also add to that the never ending "can you please repeat that please".So much so that a lot of companies are now mentioning in their advertising that they now have UK call centers.

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They are IBM staff not VM

VM didn't make this decision

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When you say 'work the groups', do you mean the excellent service currently available in the newsgroups?

- I do hope not, my personal experience has found this to be superior to the telephone support available ...

- however I do also commiserate with anyone else potentially losing their job...

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DOH!! :doh:

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If they had why was someone from VM with them today as a team going over processes etc. VM do not control what IBM do with their staff.

It is however not good news for the guys and gals in the team and we should respect this as its a difficult time for them

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That puts the staff on a par with their customers

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Wrong, they are adecco staff.

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Could one of you folks from VM stop your squabbling long enough to let us know what these eContact staff currently do?

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i say...

british companies should not be out sourcing jobs abroad to save a penny, let indian companies use indian call centres, and british companies use british call centres.

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I take it that this is to do with all the accounting/billing/support etc finally merging under VM. If so it was obviously going to happen in the end. Thats the way these mergers/takeovers work. I personally haven't used the phone support since the NTL days, but remember being on hold for over 20 minutes every time (of course my call was very important to them!). I hate to think how long I would wait these days.

More customers, less staff, = more profit.

One of these days these big companies are going to discover that not employing anyone results in nobody being able to afford their products.

What goes around, comes around.

My symphathy to all losing their jobs.

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Quite agree, mate.
And we should all use British-made computers with our connections provided by a British ISP.
Of course by extension, we should only eat British-grown food while boycotting German and Czech lager and French, Italian and Spanish wines.

And we'd better forget that foreign holiday too!

:scratch:

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people choose to buy those products albert, we dont choose or want to speak to foriegn call centres. I have no problem with virgin media selling there services abroad. So lose your lowest form of wit next post mate.

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E-contact answer your questions via e-mail, news groups.

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The one place where I managed to get help when India yet again failed to sort out my problem..

Sad to see this ending VM are a company led by bean counters who follow instructions from fools who can see nothing more than £££££ signs.. Unless they pull their heads out of (insert whatever you feel is appropriate here) and smell the coffee before they kill the goose that was laying the golden eggs..

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Glad i've given my 30 days notice now. I much rather jump than be pushed...

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A lot of the companies that are plugging the fact they use "UK Only Call Centres". The Centres seem to be in Ireland or they are planning to open here :)

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So it's okay for us to buy goods and services from outside our country and okay for a US company (Virgin Media) to sell their services overseas but not okay for them to outsource their CS to India?
You don't see the double standard?

It's your choice to use overseas call centres whenever you dial the number -- just use a different support method and let VM know why.
If you really want to get the message through, cancel your services and find a British company with British support. That's your choice too.

Oh, and I'll use whatever writing style I think is appropriate, thanks.
You're quite welcome to ignore my posts -- I promise I won't be offended!
:rolleyes:

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Well, as long as the Call Centres are in Northern ireland, then they are in the UK.;)

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Thanks for the clarification, mate.

I guess that VM management are expecting more customers' queries to be made by phone after they drop the premium-priced calls on June 1st and so they won't need as many people dealing with them online.
A rather ironic repercussion of the protests against paying for the 0906 number, eh?

The quality of service offered via the support newsgroups is excellent -- I read them almost every day! -- and I dread the thought of ever having to call the helpline ever again.

I get more disillusioned with the direction VM is taking by the day...
:(

Need help getting onto VM's Tech Support newsgroup?

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lol whats new they dont care about anyone only money.

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Just great!:(

The only reason I call tech support is for an outage. If I can get on the net then I'll use the newsgroup support - partially because it means it's not that urgent and partially because the qualityof support is 10 times better.

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Wrong ;) if were being picky, there IBM, Manpower and Addecco staff all put on notice.

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I really do think it's time that the government started to get involved with the way that outsourcing is being used in this country today.

It's not even necessarily just a cost saving measure anymore - not one which it was originally designed to be anyway, that is to bring in temporary staff during times of high employment.

British companies are doing this type of thing purely as a method of denying their staff fair pay, while also denying them fair working rights and benefits.

Most of the staff in VM when they were TUPE'd over lost out hugely after the 12 month TUPE period in terms of working conditions and cost of living pay rises.

If you end up stepping on somebody's toes they can just say that "you're no longer required on that contract" and be told that you'll need to find work elsewhere with your outsourced employer which either magically never appears or is of so poor quality that it's just better to jump ship.

Hell, even my father was affected by this outsourcing malarkey and he's an engineering manager working in Liverpool (not for VM). They froze his salary and doubled his workload.

TUPE doesn't go far enough in ensuring that workers rights are protected, and if you ask me, it's time the government started introducing quotas detailing how much of a percentage of staff must be "directly" employed by a company, or at the very least, directly employed within the UK.

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If the UK government dared to do anything like that then we'd be penalised by the World Trade Organisation for restricting the free flow of goods and services internationally. This would mean tariffs and restrictions on what we could buy and sell abroad that would not be welcomed by UK consumers.

Cut-price electronics from the Far East and cheap food imports from Africa are the flip-side of the new economics of globalisation -- what folks from Greenpeace and human rights organisations have been yelling for years.

By all means call for a return to protectionism (and I'd be one of the first to support you) but expect to be shouted down by every shopper out for a bargain, let alone the financiers who call the politicians' tune!

Apologies for the political rant -- you'll now be returned to the mass consumer market of the 21st century....
;)

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dumbest post of the day.

import and export of PRODUCTS is good, exporting british JOBS is bad, am i getting through to you, you see the difference here?

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Perhaps there will be more disgruntled people out there shortly to blow the whistle on certain, erm, VM practices?

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Spot on Rhyming, my whole department (facilities management) was outsourced, not as a cost saving but in order to reduce headcount and fit a template set out by head office to shed everything other than core bussiness. I transfered departments before outsourcing in order to keep my service (yes I'm lucky to have had that option, most workers affected by outsourcing don't). At the moment the outsourced employees are on the same pay and most conditions as they were, the unions faught hard for this and will continue to challenge any changes.Now whenever we need their services it must cost more as on top of their wages, parts etc their company adds a profit margin.

The one thing that keeps these jobs here in the UK is that there is physical equipment to be worked on. Call centres, online support staff etc by the very nature of their work can be, and are most often, located anywhere in the world. The only people who can affect this are customers who use the call centres. If you can't understand what "David", located somewhere on the Indian subcontinent, is saying make the fact politely known.
It must be said though, it can be just as difficult to understand "David" from Glasgow ( Renfrewshire! ) :(

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Oi! I'm from dahhn saarf, and it has been my honour to work with the sons of Hibernia on many an occasion! I can understand 'em!

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There's actually no difference in economic, philosophical or legal terminology so no, I'm afraid your ill-informed insults don't persuade me.

We're bound by international treaties to permit the free flow of goods and services around the world and many countries have been severely penalised for breaking those rules.

But if you insist on restricting the topic to people's jobs, I'd ask you to consider whether "importing" nurses from South Africa to prop up the NHS (leaving their native health care system to collapse) is okay?
Or that it's now apparently impossible to find a plumber in Poland because so many have moved to the UK in search of higher wages?
What about allowing British subjects to take jobs abroad for foreign companies?

Do you think they should be banned or restricted too?

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It wasn't intended as an insult to Glaswegians or anyone else for that matter. Just to illustrate that complaining that you can't understand the accent of , for example,our Indian friends as a reason to keep call centres in the UK doesn't always stand up to scrutiny. Through my job I deal with people from many countries, some of whom speak better English then we do!

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And not one of them worth a light.

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The discussions on Data Protection Act were :notopic: but had merit, and thus now have their own thread.

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thanks rob, but if you could correct the spelling and make it a general DPA thread all the better....i like my threads to go on a tangent now and then to open up new and untryed thought pattens.....for everyones benefit.

"Could a Data Prevent Act Notice Stop Overseas Call Centres?"
"Could a Data Protection Act Notice Stop Overseas Call Centres and other things?" for instance! delete this message after you have corrected the other thread if you like.

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Sorry to here about the redundancies for the e-contact / newsgroup support staff from Liverpool. Not the most pleasant of things to go through in life. Thanks for the great support and lets hope you all find work elsewhere without any difficulties.

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Seconded.

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Best of Luck! in searching for a New Job! The E-contact Team had some of the most experienced and long term established members of staff whom where there pretty much from the beginning of Telewest, It's a mistake I'm sure the fat cat who decided these cuts will realise one day. They will never have good quality people back to pick up the pieces when the 30 days have been reached, and expectations that more reductions in good quality staff will happen again soon!

I'm looking forward to 01 June repeating my name 3 times to an agent whom still gets your name totally wrong. It's the simple things in life that you appreciate, master that and my confidence will be there throughout. Get my name wrong in the first minute of my call gives me no confidence that you will sort out my fault!

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firstly im sorry to hear about the job losses, truly a very sad occassion especially given the talent and skills they are clearly throwing away.
being ex telewest staff myself i know exactly how you feel.


Ive no problem with foreign call centres, however, ive learnt that the first a main part of customer service is being able to clearly communicate both ways with your customer.
Its very frustrating trying to discuss any problem when the other party is reading from a script as more often than not your query strays from that script and then the problems start.

that said, yesterday i had to call up as my broadband had gone down and the operator was actually very good, so theyre not all bad, i guess it does depend who you get.
The previous occassion was not so positive, after being asked several times if i wanted to pay my bill, and several attempts of saying, no ive got a technical problem i then asked if i could speak to someone who spoke better english, i was promptly cut off........

that wasnt the first time, ive had many a fun time trying to speak to sky and made to feel racist because i wanted to speak to an english call centre.

Like people have said on here it does seem a major cost cutting excercise with very short sited goals. ultimately if customers cant even communicate with the company they pay good money to then they will simply go elsewhere.

Ive held back so many times from ringing up tech support for just that reason and naturally its me thats lost out because ive had no service and really didnt want to jump through hoops to get the problem sorted. (i`'ll pass the soap box onto the next person now)

once again, sorry to hear your news guys. im sure youll have no problems finding other positions.

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A rather strange argument.
I'd say that the majority of the british working public would rather NOT see jobs going to foreign workers. The problem is, being part of the EU allows them to take jobs here.

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Alex Brown was asked 9 days ago if support for the newsgroups was being shutdown. he said he will find out for us and let us know. he has just posted to say that he's been on jury service and is going on leave again.
Someone in the group started a thread about jury service only yesterday. far out man!

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He has been !!

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If anyone working for VM are activly looking for other employment there is a place in hampshire actively looking for staff..

Mind knowing VM they will be making ppl redundant in areas where jobs are hard to find.

http://www.dark.co.uk/careers.dg
One good thing it does say strictly no agencies..

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Looks like the staff have already left the building. there has been no support in any of the groups since yesterday morning.

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They're posting in support.broadband.cable since 11:17 BST

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E-Contact are still there, the 30 day consultation period ends on 6th June, thats when everybody expects to get the 30 days notice,or whatever period they are entitled to.