Emerge Is In India!!!!!

Jeeze. They aren't saying that an Indian is any more likely to steal. What they are worried about is an overseas thief or company being outside the US law, or as a consumer not being affording any protection because over the lack of juristiction.

 

AMEN Cable, TY!

Sassy

 

I work for Sprint PCS and we have two customer care call centers in India, one in Cannada, and one in Mexico. all these centers are bound by US laws for theft and fraud, but more importantly Sprint is responcable for the actions of the CSRs in those centers. These companies are contract call centers that are required to be boned and insured against these kind of issues within the united states. Don't let fear get the best of you.

 

It is an American company that is ultimately responsible. When the consumer calls their call center, they call and American telephone number. They are calling to talk about an American credit card that is owned by an American bank. The contract they signed was an American contract. The President of the company is an American and his or her company pays American taxes. It doesn't matter if they contract little green men on Mars...the American company is the one responsible for the actions of their sub-contractors.

Hawg Hanner

 

I read other day in USA-TODAY front page that India has 10 times more number of cows than in USA, interesting!!

 

I think number of business that accepts credit cards in India is less than 1% of the business here. If they want to misuse they have to come New York.

I was in a embassy suites one time, they said they print all the credit card numbers at least 10 times in different reports daily and not a single page is shredded, this is scary.

 

My personal and protected information, shouldn't be in India nor any other country, says me.

Sassy

 

Why don't they employ companies here to do it? Because of people like you and I! Each and every one of us on this board is trying to increase our credit balances and decrease our interest rates. On another thread, there's a gentleman who doesn't think he should pay a bill for services he rightfully used because it was so long ago--which means that the consumers that do use services from that company pay more.

So, American banks and credit card companies make less money. What do they do? The increase the % that companies who sell us services have to pay to them. That means the price of those goods go up again. Now, you and I want those goods; cars, stereos, computers, houses, boats, RVs, furniture, etc. And in order to buy those goods, they cost more. Well, making $3.00/hour ain't exactly going to pay for a house, car and a brand new Sony TV. Who here wants to earn $3.00/hour? No one. But the people in India do...and it means these companies save money and can lower their interest rates, increase your balances and make you happy.

There's nothing wrong with the people of India working the customer call center. It's no different than if there was (and believe me, there are) a customer call center in Canada. None of us is truly FROM this country. Our parents, grandparents, great grandparents and/or great-great grandparents came from another country. There is a much greater chance of your personal information being lifted from a dishonest person in this country seeing your information (e.g. waiter, clerk, credit agency representative, bank teller, loan officer, legal secretary, webmaster, high school hacker, car salesman, janitor at The Gap, etc.) than the people in India.

If the American laws protect you, if the credit card company pays for any and all charges over $50, if chances are far greater that your information will be lifted in this country and not India, if the credit card company is held responsible under American laws, why do you care? Is it merely because they are Indians?

Hawg Hanner

 

With cows being sacred, why would they eat them?


anyhow... I am personally not too worried where the call centers are located. The Business is still a US Business and still in my mind subjected to US rules.

 

If they made some of them FOOD instead of sacred, they would have enough food for ALL the people...

 

The fact remains that we live in a world economy. Our country's specialty is computers, aerospace, banking and finance, insurance, service oriented industries, retail sales, telecommunications, etc. Most of these jobs that are going overseas are jobs that we do not want to do ourselves. Right now our country has a 5.8% unemployment rate...and that's the highest it has been in years, which is not a bad rate at all. In economics school they teach you that 5% unemployment is considered "nominal" unemployment. That 5% are people between jobs, in school or just don't want to work. Anything below that number is bad for the economy because workers can chose what company they want to work for and thus salaries go up...instant inflation. Anything slightly above 5% is good for the economy because it keeps prices down, quality up and productivity up. As such, inflation is down, quality is as high as it has ever been and producitvity rates are sky high in this country. And if Indian economy is good, then they buy more of our goods and services, which helps again too.

Hawg Hanner

 

Re: I agree with you Hawg--xeno

I am not so sure if it is xenophobia or maybe naivete.

As for an Indian in India having our social security information or something along those lines I do not see how in the grand scheme of things that person would even care. For one if they are in India, a social security number is not going to help them establish credit in the United States when they do not live in the country. Outside the US, a social security number is pretty worthless.

I believe you are right on target with the American mentality of instant gratification and correlating a relation between this and temptation.

I lived overseas in France studying for just shy of two years. Several things I noticed:

A) I FELT safer in France than I have ever felt in the US. Pretty much there is an impossibility of obtaining a firearm so you truly did not feel like that if you ticked someone off on the freeway that they could turn around and shoot you in the head and two even when lost in parts of town you particularly did not like-- you still realized that you would not fall prey to a drive by.

B) Theft--- In the instances I observed theft was highly more unlikely in general. I spent my senior year in high school in a french school. During my first few days in school, I asked where the lockers were (since french high school is more like college your classes are spread out during the day and you can have lots of free time through the day). None of the french students knew what I meant, and when I explained one of the students informed me that during lunch or when I wanted to go into town to shop, drink some coffee, a beer, etc etc that I should just leave my bookbag in the courtyard of the school in a big pile just like any other student. I asked this student-- well what about theft? The students then looked at me confused and asked me why anyone would go through my backpack. For the year I was in high school and later taking university I never once had a problem with any student ever going into my bookbag. Now if I left my bag in my american highschool or even university, I am sure the bag would not last more than a good couple hours before it walked off or was rummaged through.

All in all we are currently in a service economy here in the US which means in a service economy the greater amount of jobs are lower paying service positions (ie customer service, clerical, hospitality-- there are actually research labor articles written now about how the modern day clerical worker feels in terms of alienation and being made a slave to the job are no more different than Karl Marx's fear of the common textile mill worker and factory worker).

Having worked in HR in recruitment, I can tell you first hand of the high turn over, and the difficulty in trying to hire people into lower paying service jobs. Even now many people in this country believe that even though for the most part they are not highly skilled that we all deserve to be making 40k+ a year.
When people work at certain hourly levels, most of the time these people jump at the first sign of a 25 cents raise, etc etc. I could understand why some companies look to outsource their call centers to other countries. The labor and total cost (and especially since usually this labor is contract) is by far less expensive than to hire the same sort of staff here in the US. I imagine in a country like India where there is even a larger inequity between the well to do and the poor is greater than even the gap in the US, people with a decent paying job are happy to keep the job.

Pretty much I think I would rather have an Indian worker in India have access to my social security number than someone here in the US working within a call center. Maybe this is where I should mention one of the most difficult issues that I was faced with in recruiting for a calll center is experienced by many other HR departments. We always did background checks which sometimes involved credit checks. We were finding in our industry that some customer service reps were actually jumping from competitor company to company within very short periods of times. A large percentage of the total applicant pool had actually been dismissed at their previous jobs from using customer information, ie, social security numbers, credit card numbers, etc and were using this information to basically run up charges, establish new cell phone accounts, etc etc.

How is that for something to chew on?

 

Required to be boned? Lol, wouldn't that be considered sexual harrassment?

 

Emerge is issued by Providian Bank.

-0m

 

Playing 'Devil's Advocate' here for a minute:

1.) Indian Terorist wants to gain entry to the US. Gets a job at a 'call center' with access to US citizen's SSN, Name, DOB, Address, and other identifying information and orders a 'replacement' passport or DL or SS Card or what have you.....

2.) Indian Thief gets a job at a 'call center' and gains access to SSNs, Names, DOBs, Blah blah blah. Starts to SELL that information over the internet to 'script kiddies' and the like who use it in US to purchase all kinds of stuff. Basically Identity Theft.

Just because the person is in India doesn't mean that the actual crime is commited in India. Those people aren't held to US laws even though the company that employed them is, that wont fix the damage that is already done. Are you sure that India has laws against stealing SSNs? They don't even HAVE SSNs do they?


***I'm not saying I believe this stuff, it is probably not any more or less likely to happen there as here, but at least here the individual can be caught and prosecuted (or at least I'd like to think so).

 

I'm flying with ya, PAE,

What is your recourse, serving a summons on an employee living in India that isn't bound by american law -- yeah right, they'll be appearing!

Sassy

 

American Express outsources some customer service functions to a company in the Philippines called eTelecare. Here's their website:
http://www.etelecare.com/home2.html

If anyone remembers the AmEx Cobaltcard, you may remember the distinctly foreign accents of the Cobaltcard customer service reps. They were all people who worked at eTelecare in Manila, Philippines.

Outsourcing to foreign companies is an unfortunate trend, imho, for a variety of excellent reasons, some of which have been detailed in this thread. On the other hand, the point is that this isn't some phenomenon that is unique to Emerge.

Doc