According to the last paragraph; "Although the practice is not yet legislatively mandated, some U.S. companies have established policies and procedures of their own that instruct foreign call center operators to transfer calls back to U.S.-based reps upon customer request."

Every time I say that it works like a charm so I guess they don't know it's not true

:You got that right. We are so afraid of being "politically correct" that we're giving it away. Our ancestors must be rolling in their graves.

:bigbow:

Ancestors of US citizens had accents. ;)

Depending on where each of us live, we might think each other has an accent the other can't understand...

For example, someone from New England talking with someone from the Deep South.

Exactly! After all, English is NOT this land's native language.

Big business greed gave it away, so please don't blame a 50 cent an hour employee for this. This is our fault not there's.

Frankly, I'm offended by the idea that my tax dollars are used to pay for translators for people who come to this country and refuse to learn our language. It's also obscene that most if not all of our government forms are printed in multiple languages. I don't believe that there is any other country in
the world that does this unless they have multiple native languages.

Really? Since when? Are you going to argue that because some dopey congressmen who are afraid of losing some vote refuse to make English our "official" national language, that people in this country haven't spoken primarily English for the past 400 years?

English has always been the native language of this country.

And accents and dialects are a lot different than languages.

NAFTA started the move 20 years ago


PS...large corporations job...only job..is to make money for its shareholders...that is all of us with IRA's etc. NAFTA was the catalyst for much of this, not all, but that is what gave the impetus.

I don't feel it is an intolerance of foreign people. For me it is the belief that our official language is English. When I call customer service I should expect to speak with a person who speaks English fluently. It makes no more sense than hiring a plumber to be a nurse. Their job is to COMMUNICATE and if they cannot be understood, they are NOT communicating; therefore they are not successfully performing their job function.

The United States has NO official language. Some states have adopted that stance.

Our government says we must provide access to those who do not speak english

I never understood NAFTA, but it did seem wrong tome.

As I said, NAFTA was the beginning of, or at least an attempt, to begin a world wide economy. An agreement between US, Canada and Mexico to trade as a bloc. Some say it cost jobs, and some say it added jobs. Company I worked for closed a very large manufacturing site to move it to Mexico as a result of NAFTA.

But, I use that as only the beginings. There are many factors to this discussion.

One, and one I think is important is our tax code. The last few elections we have heard a lot of lip service given to this subject....but NO action We actually charged the committee put together to discuss the budget deficit with also looking at the tax code. After millions of dollars and lots of effort, the committee report was thrown aside and just not discussed, I assume because it did not fit a political agenda.

We need to fix the tax code first.

We are not going to protect american jobs until we do that, PLUS convince americans to take some of these lower paying jobs, and or provide incentives to companies to keep these jobs here.

It is not simple, and simply making fun or and throwing stones at large corportations is just plan silly and ill advised. They are doing their jobs...our government is not. Watch for tax overhaul debates in the election cycle and pay attention.

Absolutely. The call takers in foreign countries that do not live here are not citizens.