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It's not just customer service reps that are being outsourced and this is where all the colleges lie to you about how "good a field is" and "how it's growing" to get your money when they know damn well things are being outsourced to much cheaper places with whom an American, who has to pay the American cost of living, simply cannot compete because of the wages. I was working in an IT field where many of us have master's degrees. It's kind of hard to replicate that in a flash! (I actually worked in Manhattan, not on Long Island.) Sadly, your theoretical customer service rep may be enticed by a college to get new skills and will end up in yet another field that will end up being outsourced to places with much much lower wages. Then they try and blame it on a "lack of workers in the US." They created that lack of workers because of their own desire to save money on wages and ship jobs overseas. Yes, if things keep going the way they are going, there will be a lack of workers as people have to pay $$$$$$$ and take on debt in many cases to get a college degree in the USA. Who wants to study a field that is being outsourced to a low cost nation with whom Americans simply cannot compete because of the wages we need here?
So now the chickens are coming home to roost. The cover story the government made to keep the money flowing into billionaires' coffers: "outsourcing is good for the USA, things will be cheaper" is and always was a lie.
Now our essentials, like food, gasoline and heating oil are skyrocketing because places like China and India want them too, and that is a direct result of killing off factories in the USA (and other developed nations) and offshoring customer service jobs and putting semi-skilled workers on the unemployment line and offshoring high tech jobs and putting workers with high level degrees on the unemployment line.
You cannot even believe the humiliation I suffered when, because the Indians were not doing well learning our jobs in India, they had to be brought over here to the US, to my office, to be trained. I resented it because they got their jobs just because THEIR WAGES WERE CHEAP. Their skills were atrocious. Something that took, me, by myself, 3 hours to do took several of the Indians working together 21 hours to do and still had mistakes. If they had won our jobs fair and square because they had the same skills we did but were cheaper, I wouldn't have been as disgusted. Also, please note, these are not "poor, starving Indians." The real poor starving Indians are not even literate in their own language, let alone know english; they have not even gone to grade school, let alone have a college degree and the rich Indians like it that way: CHEAP servants. No, these Indians that came to take our jobs were from the upper classes. I remember one of them taking pics in our office and using a camera that cost US$2,000+.
Most of our politicians DO NOT CARE. They are SERVANTS to their corporate masters. The robber barons are back. They just can hide their excesses better in this century. But as things get harder and harder for the "middle class" ... the taxpaying base of America ... the Golden Goose that is being strangled to death bit by small bit ... it will be more and more apparent what the rich and the corporations they own are up to. Us Long Islanders are kind of used to it, with our dubious distinctions of having the highest utility costs, the highest property taxes, etc. Unfortunately, the rest of the country is following along. Each day the standard of living of the average person in the USA gets lower and lower.
Well, NAFTA had no agreements with India, it had to do with Mexico. However, the precedent certainly was set.
Remember when Ross Perot was running for president and he complained about NAFTA and said something like he "could hear the huge sucking sound taking American jobs south of the border"?
He turned out to be a big traitor and someone who lied to us and really only cared about HIMSELF, not Americans, as a few years after he ran for president, Perot Systems fired almost all of their American workers and offshored their jobs to India before it even became popular among CEOs. And me, the idiot, voted for him twice because I thought having someone who was a businessman, not a lawyer as most politicians are, might make a difference in the way our government was run. Duh to me!
Don't be too harsh on yourself...every politician lies. Anyone who thinks otherwise is lying to themself.
Yes, I have to agree...I don't like calling customer service for airlines and/or computer tech support and being routed to India. I, personally, cannot understand their english enough to be asisted.
Then again, low-security prison inmates are also taking our customer service calls, running credit crd numbers, etc. Pretty scary as well!
Don't be too harsh on yourself...every politician lies. Anyone who thinks otherwise is lying to themself.
Yes, I have to agree...I don't like calling customer service for airlines and/or computer tech support and being routed to India. I, personally, cannot understand their english enough to be asisted.
Then again, low-security prison inmates are also taking our customer service calls, running credit crd numbers, etc. Pretty scary as well!
As for tech support and customer service: if you cannot understand the accent, ask to be transferred to a call center in the USA. They may lie to you and say there is none, but the fact is EVERY bank, airline, credit card, computer manufacturer, etc., has a customer service team in the USA as well as overseas. Why? Because they do not want to inconvenience their high net worth customers with Indian call centers! Do you think if the computer can tell it is about Donald Trump's account on the line that it will route him to a customer service center in India? No freakin' way! Look at Dell, for whom tech support is simply a joke because of the Indians they have reading scripts over there. They still won't give it up. (Cheap labor makes Michael Dell much richer $$$$!) However they did admit defeat and got some crack tech support teams in the USA for their BUSINESS CUSTOMERS and for individual customers who bought their highest end machines. Hint for Dell tech support: When you first call you will be talking to the lowest level people, the ones who read from a script, who will for the most part be useless, unless you are the kind of computer user who needs to be told to "make sure the plug is in the outlet." Ask them if you can talk to "Level 2" and you will get people who speak English more fluently and have better skills than just reading from a list. (I learned this from my bro-in-law as I WOULD NEVER BUY A DELL COMPUTER.)
As for inmates working in call centers ... I don't know how prevalent this is, but they may even be cheaper than offshore. The difference between them and those who work offshore is that THE INMATES CAN BE PROSECUTED FOR STEALING AN AMERICAN'S IDENTITY. The offshore call center workers are totally and completely immune to any and all American laws. That is why if your identity has been stolen, the bank, credit card, etc., will often never give you details and just hushes it up as quickly as possible. When they won't give you details is when you know someone offshore has done it and they want to keep their cheap labor in place and keep you dumb and happy. There have been scandals in both the UK and Australia where Indians have been caught red-handed selling millions of identities from out of their so-called "crime proof" call centers. Also note, India has one of the most corrupt criminal justice systems in the entire world, so if they are smart enough to spirit data out of the "secure call center" they are smart enough to give a few well-placed bribes. That is provided their employer even tries to get them arrested instead of hushing it up so nobody knows what happened. The corporate-owned US media obeys its masters better than the independent, non-corporate owned media in the rest of the world and keeps it all quiet. Just because it is not on the news and the only identity-theft related crime that gets reported ALWAYS has US-based criminals (that's suspect in itself .. why is it ALWAYS US-based criminals they do news reports on), does not mean it does not happen to us because of offshore outsourcing. I myself know several people who have had identity theft happen to them and saw charges in places all over the world to their accounts, yet when they asked questions about WHO did it got no answers. If the bank, store, etc., will NOT tell you who stole your identity, that means it happened overseas and they cannot prosecute the criminal and cannot force the criminal to be prosecuted in their home country either. If it happened here, they will tell you. If they say "they don't know who did it" and "are investigating" they are lying and biding their time and waiting for YOU to forget about it and go on with your life. If they don't know who did it, they WILL be able to find out. If not, then all the websites that do business with encrypted data would have to be completely unsafe if criminals can't be caught, wouldn't they? But they are very safe to do business on and that is why they exist. Identity theft is because of PEOPLE who have access to data in person either by physically handling the card or by being granted access to the databases that house your information, such as the access given to customer service reps. For example, when one of my sisters visited Atlanta she went shopping. Shortly afterward, she found unauthorized charges on her credit card at places she hadn't shopped in. She reported it to her credit card company and they had the police investigate and a cashier at one of the stores my sister shopped in was the one who used her credit card number. My sister was given all the information, including the criminal's full name and address. If your identity is stolen or your credit cards are used in an unauthorized manner and they won't tell you who did it, it is because of offshore outsourcing, which they love so dearly that they are willing to endanger their customers with identity theft overseas. If anyone has had this experience and was not told what happened, I suggest you push for an answer and see how far you get.
Last edited by I_Love_LI_but; 05-20-2008 at 09:45 PM..
It was Dell! And it WAS completely scripted! I'd try speaking and they would just keep reading. I finally tossed the Dell b/c of customer support and the computer was junk.
It was Dell! And it WAS completely scripted! I'd try speaking and they would just keep reading. I finally tossed the Dell b/c of customer support and the computer was junk.
Very interesting post!
Ha! That's the spookiest thing I've heard about Dell ... that they will completely ignore anything you say and just keep reading their script at you! I just got another catalog from them and THREW IT AWAY. They are wasting their money printing catalogs and paying to mail them to me.
I will say ONE positive thing regarding outsourcing (is Cablevision outsourcing??)...have you noticed that Optimum Voice directory now has NEW operators who can actually SPELL and direct you to the number??!! I got 2 with British accents today, and was just sooo happy that I didn't have to spell the name Jones!!
I will say ONE positive thing regarding outsourcing (is Cablevision outsourcing??)...have you noticed that Optimum Voice directory now has NEW operators who can actually SPELL and direct you to the number??!! I got 2 with British accents today, and was just sooo happy that I didn't have to spell the name Jones!!
As far as I know, all of Cablevision's customer service is US-based. Since the wages in Britain are quite a bit higher than in the USA for many types of jobs, it would not make business sense for Cablevision to outsource there. Perhaps the people you spoke to are relocated here from the UK. Next time you talk to one, ask them where they are located. When I speak to a US-based customer service rep, I always make it a point to tell them that I appreciate talking with a person in the USA before ending the call.
Last edited by I_Love_LI_but; 05-20-2008 at 09:49 PM..
Ha! That's the spookiest thing I've heard about Dell ... that they will completely ignore anything you say and just keep reading their script at you! I just got another catalog from them and THREW IT AWAY. They are wasting their money printing catalogs and paying to mail them to me.
Nothing wrong with Dell Computers themselves, my dad runs a small non-for profit organization and "outsources" all his "IT work" to the cheapest employee possible (me). We have 7 or 8 of the complete bare bones stripper model Dell computers set up on a network running perfectly, some date back to the 90s and run Windows 2000 on as little as 64MB of RAM! I think the whole setup cost about $400 worth of used/junk parts. I've never had to call tech support for anything in my life and to tell you the truth never would, it's probably easier figuring out on your own.
I hate talking politics but outsourcing destroyed this country in ways we've only just begun to feel. That's all I'll say about it!
It's a shame, really, that children are starving all over the world, and unfortunately that has been the case for ages. If faced with the decision to feed our children or feed children elsewhere, I am going to feed our children, first. That's my choice.
In NYS, the median income for a family of four is $75,513 (margin of error +/- $1,080)
source: Income - Median Family Income in the Past 12 Months by Family Size (http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/medincsizeandstate.html - broken link)
I am placing my family into that income situation to show how easily families can become working poor.
The median income falls into the 25% tax bracket, so deduct $11,566 (figure approximate) from the median = $63,947
$63,947 = $5,329/month (this figure does not take the NYS income tax into account)
Heating oil (My family of four is using approx 1200 gals per year) at it's current cost $4.249 per 100 gals --todays delivery w/tax cost me $435-- (figure the higher costs later will average out with the lower cost earlier in the season) = Oil $5,220 per year or $435/month
LIPA on this house: $275/month
National Grid: $20/month (cooking and dryer only)
Mortgage $1600 (which is less than some rent figures I've read)
Food (going by above chart I'm at ) $904 month
Drugs, copays, employee contribution to health insurance: $1600/month
Phone $60/mon (landline local and long distance)
Auto insurance $104/mon
Clothing (2 growing children) $100/mon
Car payment $300/mon
Gasoline (commuting) $520/mon
(Let's not forget that we haven't paid NYS out of this..I'm guesstimating NYS income tax about $5200/year or $435/month)
Guess what? If this were my family earning that median income figure, we would be -$1,024 each month. The water bill isn't figured in, cable, internet, sundry school items (pencils, notebooks, looseleaf paper, TI-83 graphing calculators, etc.) and little things, like feminine hygiene products, haircuts, etc. There's no credit card debt -- which is not the norm. The deficit would continue to grow as we factor those items in and when we start to take into account the ever increasing price of gas and oil and it's direct impact on food prices, clothing prices, electricity cost, etc. No where on LI do I see incomes levels rising to match the meteoric rise in oil.
Look at the list; where does one cut back? Clothing -- rely on thrift shops and hand offs from friends save $100/month. Can't drop collision on the car as there's a loan. Sell the car and buy a cheaper used car? No -- you'll trade payments for repairs. Reliable transport to work is a necessity. No show at work = no job = bigger problems. Taxes went up and up went the escrow on the mortgage. It's a refi for the best possible rate. NO wiggle room there. Health insurance? Spouse has a pre-existing condition and needs frequent, costly testing. To drop coverage will only open up the family to financial ruin God forbid the cancer reappears.
If there's emergency home repairs needed: cesspool, leaking roof, dead furnace, etc., this family would be forced to borrow money, placing them further into debt.
I can only assume that you have an excellent career in a field which continues to grow, despite the recession we are in. If you do, more power to you! There are those of us whose livelihoods are directly impacted by the economy's pitches and rolls. When things get tight, we like to know that our money is being spent in such a way as to have a positive effect on the economy and our jobs.
I hope your support of this legislation and global view are right, but please remember that there are working poor right in your neighborhood. Simply because the government chooses to overlook them doesn't mean they will go away.
But how much more do you want the govt to give? Do you want to move to a fully socialized system? How is this bill directly taking away from the poor in the US?
My point in summary (we are obviously not going to change each others minds here), is that it benefits us here at home to feed the world.
ps - I have no college degree and am an Admin Asst, my husband is in IT. When it becomes too expensive to comfortably live on LI, I will leave. I feel privileged to live in such a place, so close to NYC.
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No Dells in my house! Never, ever.
