That we don't like them sending our jobs overseas.

The other day I rang an oil company. I wanted to know what was the correct grade of their oil to use in the car my youngest daughter had bought.

Long ago I was a member of this companies racing team, so have a soft spot for them. I was not too happy when I heard an Indian voice on the phone. I had previously found them very good in giving such advice, & transferring you to a technical person when required.

Not only do I not trust some Indian, who's main skill is speaking English, to advise me properly on things mechanical, but I have tinnitus, so most accents make it harder to understand what is said.

After a most unsatisfactory experience, I have changed my oil company.

Then my phone stopped working. When I rang for help, I got a Philippine accent. This one was so thick I could not understand them at all. It took 4 goes to find someone I could understand.

Then I found the operator was following some script, & would not vary from it to answer my questions.

Is it any surprise that I now have a different phone company.

I have decided that any company that connects me to an overseas call centre will have one less customer, immediately. These centers are an impost on my well being, & I will no longer do business with companies who use them. If enough of Ozzies do the same, companies will soon stop using them.

Come & join me in making companies respond to our annoyance.

Hasbeen. Ever been to a garden centre and looked at a Venus fly trap?

Come on old boy! You can do it:)

"Time to tell the big companies"......You might want to take your own advice:) There;s a new plot in the hot seat;)

BLUE

yes i have a limited 'service provider'[dodo]
i contracted with them to supply internet cionnection
50 dollars @ 250 meg per month

i have not yet recieved my full meg downloads
infact the meg was accumalative
so i rang em, up

got an indian
took half an hour to finally get to some superviser
who 'gave me some extra megs'

but in reality was only giving what i paid for
its as slow as[you cant watch movies]or listen to web audio
often it runs out only halfway downloading these pages

i often get only the adverts

its based on enron teqniques
its pathetic

i tried to get another [vodaphone]
99 dollars for 12 mths i gig per month

who took over my 3..
[which was great]

anyhow vodaphone had 3 bugs i had to work my way past
i finaly managed after much searching for solutions
to get to vodaphone login

after it failed to log me in
[after taking all my details 4 times]
over two day's..i took it back to woo-lies for a refund

we are being scammed big time
in all 'services'

much more than we can ever be allowed to know

here is the basic scam

http://employmentpolicy.org/topic/23/blog/if-it-sounds-too-good-be-true-what-you-need-know-don%E2%80%99t-about-privatizing-infrastructur

Dear Hasbeen,

Have you tried using the post instead?

Just write your query/request/complaint on a sheet of paper, sign, date, place it in an envelope, write their address and yours on it, add a stamp and drop it in the red box around the corner. It worked for 100s of years and it still works well now.

Good luck!

It is because we are a shareholder driven economy not a citizen driven society. We are only a democracy in a minimalist sense, voting every three years and even then the voting choice is slim pickin's, and if you vote on a particular policy you are likely to get less or more than you bargaine (political promises being what they are).

I will sign up to your cause Hasbeen, and have been ditching companies for years that offshore jobs to any large degree if you can actually get an honest answer out of the big corps. I reckon our choices are becoming less and less but maybe if more and more people blacklisted, consumer power would win the day.

Since the GFC hit hard the United States, interested groups and governments (ironically) are supporting huge Buy Local Save Jobs campaigns - it had to come. It is pointless, and people are reaslising it, to argue for cheap goods by using poor workers, and then not being able to afford it anyway because of high unemployment.

I assume that you are equally willing to bear the extra cost to those services, Hasbeen, that your demands would entail?

I hope so.

Because, whether we like it or not, there is a "price that the market will bear" factored into the service. If that requires a minimum of telephone support, from a crowded call-centre in Bangalore or Manila, then that is the decision made by the service provider.

You benefit from the lower price, but suffer accordingly from the lower service levels.

However, if there turned out to be a demand for a premium service, where the call-centre phone-jockey has a familiar accent, and the employees are rewarded and compensated according to our Employment Laws and Workplace Relations Acts, you may be sure that the companies would jump at the chance.

That's how the airlines make extra dollars from the seats at the front of the plane. The journey is the same, but the profit margin on those seats is massively higher, as the passenger pays more for the extra simpering.

If there were insufficient simper-addicts - and if public servants had to pay their own fares - they would not offer such a "premium" service.

In short, the way to "tell the big companies that we don't like them sending our jobs overseas" is to tell them that you are willing to pay more. If there are enough of you with a short fuse and tinnitus, you'll get your wish, sure as eggs.

Incidentally...

>>The other day I rang an oil company. I wanted to know what was the correct grade of their oil to use in the car my youngest daughter had bought<<

Had you thought of using the internet?

http://www.valvoline.com.au/pdf/Essential%20Guide%20to%20Motor%20Oil%20Brochure%20FINAL.pdf

Get your daughter to tell you about it sometime - it can be very useful.