VM to shut 4 call centres
 

The telecommunications firm plans to reduce its number of UK customer service bases from eight to four, centralising operations in Manchester.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-s...wales-43987314

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It'll be a big blow for employment in Swansea.

A total of 772 jobs will go in Llansamlet, 552 staff positions and 220 sub contractors.

Virgin Media's chief executive Tom Mockridge said the company planned to "completely exit" the site in 2019.

Re: VM to shut 4 call centres
 

Virgin Media could make 900 redundancies

https://www.cableforum.uk/board/show...3#post35945713

Re: VM to shut 4 call centres
 

For article from Sky News, excerpts below:

Re: VM to shut 4 call centres
 

Barstewards. Terrible news for those affected and bad news for customer service.

Re: VM to shut 4 call centres
 

Indeed sad news for those affected Mr K.:(

.

Re: VM to shut 4 call centres
 

So we'll have even less chance of getting through to a UK call centre.

Re: VM to shut 4 call centres
 

Exactly.

Commiserations to any VM staff losing their jobs.

I hate speaking to staff whose first language is not English (Welsh and Scottish is OK) :)

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I have a couple of friends this direct affects, sad times :(

Re: VM to shut 4 call centres
 

They should be doing what BT are doing right now and bringing the call centres back to the UK not closing them.. the quality of the outsourced call centre are terrible you can’t hear any one as it’s so noisy in the background and I find they struggle with my Irish accent causing frustrations for both of us.

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I agree. There are so many complaints about Indian call centres, you would have thought they would be the first to go.

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They are there because its cheaper for Virgin..

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Higher bills and lower service sounds like typical virgin media to me we have had problems with our internet dropping out the superhub error page is very long the first engineer they sent said the signal was weak so he screwed an adaptor onto the main cable. Didn't work so another engineer came out and said the signal was now too strong and unscrewed the adaptor again problem not solved and customer service when i got through to them said that as two engineers had been sent and each reported the issue resolved we would have to give it six months.

Re: VM to shut 4 call centres
 

But is it? I think that Virgin should look at the bigger picture ie how many customers this practice of outsourcing abroad costs in terms of customers who leave or don't sign up in the first place? How many pointless engineer call outs do they organise? etc.

There is also the human cost of people in the UK losing their jobs and the financial cost of losing income tax, employee NI contribution and employer NI contribution receipts.

If these staff cannot get work they will spend less in their local economy and may need to claim benefits. If they do manage to find alternative employment, these job losses still contribute to unemployment as these jobs are taken out of the pool available for the unemployed.

Malone is still happy to take British subscriptions though, it's pure greed.

Re: VM to shut 4 call centres
 

I know. Cheap as chips.

The problem is, the customers don't like them, and this will inevitably lead to a proportion of them jumping ship.

Given that VM is allowed to use the Virgin name only if they maintain good levels of customer service, I am surprised that they continue to use overseas call centres.

Re: VM to shut 4 call centres
 

Asda have recently done the same.

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Exactly, I don't understand it either.

Some of the ridiculous answers they give to questions are worthy of a satirical comedy series. A few examples:

After being put through to the wrong department by another department, I was repeatedly told that the department that I had just been speaking to closed hours ago!

I asked about purchasing mobile minutes for my landline and was immediately put through to Virgin Mobile!

I asked for my account number and was told that they "could certainly help with that" and was then asked for my account number!

Has anyone else come across similar nonsense? This news makes me feel sad for the employees who will lose their jobs and for VM customers alike. I could see it coming though, they saw if they could get away with it, found that they could and are now extending the practice. They are now even sending out deadlock letters, I received one from them and a manager at a UK call centre agreed that it looked like a child had written it.

Eventually I predict that all frontline VM jobs will be outsourced abroad.

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Terrible news - so many jobs lost in a deprived part of the country. I wish everyone concerned the best of luck for the future.

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Outsourcing jobs abroad for cheap labor should be banned full stop. Put the people of this so called Great Britain first.

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Totally agree.

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Perhaps it's time our government looked at punitive measures for companies that outsource jobs that can be more then adequately done by workers in this country when the company outsourcing has primary revenue from this country. It's time quality became a normal consideration again rather then constantly chasing the bottom line happily screwing over workers in this country. Nothing against workers in other countries I've found them very polite but accents both mine and theirs can be very hard to overcome at times.

Re: VM to shut 4 call centres
 

All this does is move everything abroad. Prices will go up. And we will end up paying for it.

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Yes, i've often thought that there should be a rule like that.

Doubt it would ever happen under this Government though as it would be regarded as going against the free market economy and their quest to deregulate wherever they can.

When these companies aren't finding tax loopholes they are doing this sort of thing, then it's claimed that there isn't enough money for public services.

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The headline in today's FT is "BT set to reveal plans for thousands of job cuts"

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FT sister paper.

I think as AI advances we'll be seeing more of these jobs get deleted as the bots take over.

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Absolutely. There won't be enough jobs for people as it is, let alone any immigrants.

This is why I think we need to curb immigration and any that are allowed in to fill skill shortage jobs should only be given a temporary right to stay. When automation really gets going we can then start to get rid of any that are no longer required.

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Re: VM to shut 4 call centres
 

Bit harsh I feel ...

Sad how easily we get from VM cutting call centres to getting rid of unwanted immigrants.

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The two are intertwined and will become ever more so in the future as automation takes hold.

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I'd prefer to see the term "illegal immigrants" used rather than "unwanted immigrants".

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You can never have too many highly skilled flower pickers ;)

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That is a somewhat asinine comment. If we need people to pick vegetables, fruit and flowers (inter-compatible skills), then those workers are useful to the economy. I'd rather they were here doing that then somewhere else while our produce rots.

Turning your remark on its head, though, you can never have too many rubbishly skilled offshore support agents.

Re: VM to shut 4 call centres
 

Illegal would have been an incorrect term to use, as my point refers to both illegal and legal alike, although, of course, priorities should be initially focussed on the former.

When automation takes hold there will not be enough work for people entitled to live here, let alone anyone else. If we have to set up an expensive universal citizens income scheme, we will have to control costs as much as we can.

One way that this can be achieved is by only allowing immigrants that come in now to have a fixed time to stay in the UK if they are needed at this moment in time for for skill, labour shortage areas etc.

The time will come when they will be surplus to requirements and, by definition, unwanted. We need to act now to prepare ourselves for the future.

Exceptions could be made in a minority of cases where it makes sense, for example, just to get their stats up, doctors that are needed here have been told they must leave the country!