yes, racism backed by financial power won out in the end (although TBH there was confusion as you cannot expect Indian people to immediately speak British English!) – the wealthy middle englanders who make up many of the Prus customers started taking their business elsewhere – as they did when the Pru sponsored controversial films on C4 about 12 years ago.

To be fair on Redingensians its a credit to everyone that this did not end up with a BNP councillor being elected and race attacks only slightly increased (and that was after 9/11 TBH). Loads of my friends lost their jobs when this happened.

Even the Scottish call centre staff are forced to speak Standard (i.e British English) and not to use Scots words that many English people may not understand (although I would complain if I was on the phone trying to sort out a problem and was accused of havering 😉 )

As far as the accent being calming and trustworthy, I remember when I was growing up, there was a definite standard of ‘BBC English’ which seemed to be Queen’s English, or at least upper middle class London English. Nowdays, it seems that the wider media realise that there are so many people, with so many different accents, that people can relate more to people who speak with a non-southern accent.

It is called Received Pronunciation (RP) but is seen as old fashioned and patronising nowadays.

I also heard a few years ago, though, (and I don’t know if this is true, so please don’t take offence) that there were call centres being moved to Wales and the North because the labour costs are cheaper than down south. There used to be quite a few call centres round where I am, but now there’s none.

thats true, also there are less jobs for young people up there so people try and hold on to them.

when call centres were in Reading area loads of people I know worked for theese call centres…

TBH many would be caned half the time they were at work, make loads of fuck ups with customers orders and it lost their employers business. They also played games like “customer snooker” (where they would compete to see how many transfer they could do before someone hang up), “double-tap” calls (quickly pressing the answer button twice so you in fact hang up on the customer) and retaliate against people who complained
(bear in mind they have access to a lot of personal detail)

There was an incident where a relative of mine complained about service from a call centre and their credit card details was used to order stuff off the net (the cops and card company stopped it happening, but it was clear it was a reprisal for the complaint)

Indeed that is the case, operators from the telco route the calls to the nearest blue light services for the area. The central 999 operators are BT or Cable & Wireless, you woudl have been at Barkham (or Berkam from BERKshire AMbulance) Control in Wokingham.

I think BT 999 and the debt recovery places deliberately pick Scottish people because the apparently the accent calms down people who are stressed (I’ve noticed that media companies often tend to pick Scots reporters to report on disasters etc!)

TBH the only reason that I can understand the Scots language despite having lived in Southern and Eastern England all my life is because I was once in a party crew with three Scotsmen, two from Aberdeenshire and one from Glasgow!

A lot of people here lost their jobs when the call centres went to India as well but now what a lot of them have done is still have the call centre here in the Uk but their out of hours service goes through to India. My sister’s bank for example if she calls them before 5.30pm then she will get someone in the Uk if she calls after that it is diverted to India. It means that companies don’t have to pay shift allowances out on Uk wages much cheaper to out source to India.

TBH this seems a bit fairer for everybody.

It also means the Indians also don’t have to work at odd hours (it will be their normal office hours). I hope that even if they encourage people to use standard English they do not make people put on silly accents – of course we are used to hearing people speaking English with an Indian accent nowadays in multicultural Britain; but companies which make their agents use pseudo-American accents do annoy me…

I once worked in an office with a chap who is Indian and in his late 50s – he only came to England in the 1970s.. He was ordering car insurance and ended up speaking to some chap in a Bangalore call centre and actually said

:laugh_at:”you don’t need to use that silly American accent – I know you are from (name of Indian village) – my mum and her family are from there! – if you speak decent English I will place my order (they eventually also ended up talking about cricket….)

I could never work in one of these places myself but I suppose they have got better these days. I’ve worked in factory/workshop environments (although perhaps a bit more high tech) and provided the staff aren’t over-pressurised they can be good to work in and produce good quality products..

apologies if you have done this already, but ever thought of checking in the local bike shops to see if they want new staff? in other posts its clear you enjoy cycling and know a bit about bikes.

IME they are always short of people at peak times (spring/summer) and although it takes a while to become a mechanic and there are courses you have to go on perhaps if you started now you could learn all these things.. even if you think you are not mechanically minded all you need is a reasonable brain, a bit of strength (not much, just enough to haul bike frames etc in and out of workshops) and attention to detail..

the pay isn’t much good (better than warehouse but or equal to call centre positions) but you get staff discounts etc. its really competitive though as lots of people want these jobs but I reckon you may be able to do it..