andyl

I hope none of those who are up in arms about this have foreign cars, electronics, groceries etc. It's hypocritical to complain about companies outsourcing when we take advantage of the global economy elsewhere. If outsourcing diminishes service, then that's a different matter but I've not yet had a bad experience with an Indian call centre whereas I could cite, for example, NTL CS or indeed Symantec. I recently had useless (and surly) assistance from Symantec' London call centre, went on the online chat support, didn't get much joy so pleaded with them to call. A bloke did, from India, even though, as he explained, they weren't supposed to. He was the most helpful guy on the planet and talked me down step-by-step in English which would shame many a UK call centre operator (and he'd never even been to Europe or the States).

I'd rather we didn't have globalisation which treats labour as just another commodity, or indeed a UK economy which is now so dependent on the service sector because we decimated our manufacturing industries. But we do, and we're all going to have to learn to live with it. I should add that I certainly do sympathise with those working in UK call centres who face losing their jobs, but it's an inevitable consequence (unless we start putting import tariffs on services which will no doubt mean retaliatory tariffs against us)