Vodafone has advised that as part of the amagamation with Hutchinson Australia, they will close their Melbourne based call centre, and send more calls over to the Hutinson call centre in India.

Currently Vodafone Australia operate from Melbourne, Hobart and Cairo.  Yes, I said Cairo, as in Egypt.

As a long time Vodafone user, with four active and contracted connections, I find this news a little, well, I guess the best way to put it, is I’m pretty pissed off.

I have nothing against Indians, but overall, I haven’t had a lot of success out of their call centres.  Luckily, I only ever have to ring Vodafone when I want a new phone, and I would assume their sales teams will remain Australian based.  Well I hope so anyway.

Cairo, they aren’t too bad, and there isn’t as much of a language barrier that most Indian call centres have, and their support is second to none.

But this corporate money grabbing in our companies has to stop, and they need to think of the end user, and the Australian jobs that are being lost.

It’s funny.  A little while ago, a rep called me about my business service, and specifically spoke about their overseas support.  Now I can’t imagine everyone else, apart from me had nice things to say about companies sending calls to India.  Yet they go ahead, go against the customer, and do it anyway.  And now, this bloke who was employed to see what people thought about Indian call centres, is most probably out of a job.

Anyway, I’m still pretty pissed off, so that’s my rant.