Hi has anyone else had a similar experience? We keep getting phone calls from this Indian call centre asking for someone we have never heard of. We checked with our phone supplier and they assure us that our number has never been used by anyone else before, we are the only ones to have used it. So obviously the call centre have a wrong number. We have many, many times asked for our number to be removed from their data base. We are also registered for telephone preference service, but that is of no help, as they have no control over foreign call centres!!!! No here comes the interesting bit. This call centre has called us for the past year claiming to be from the following companies,
Santander,
Claims uk,
The law Society,
AA,
Wills uk,
various insurance companies,
waterboard,
the list is endless!!!!!!! so when you fill out any forms beit online or phone or post, just make sure you give the right info! But remember these call centres do not come under any British regulations as such, and will sell your phone number, personal info which you have supplied, and email addresses too!!! So if a Mr. Martin Mehan is reading this, we are sick to death of phone calles in your name!!!!

TPS applies to all of those companies.

I regularly get calls for someone with another name. I suspect that it is the previous owner of the number and I think you will find that contrary to what BT tell you, this is what has happened with you.

I never give any information to anyone on the phone other than the person is not at this address. It is pointless telling them to take the name off their databases, they won't.

We have been in touch with TPS and they cannot monitor call centres from abroad, even though they are working for UK based companies. Our number is not with BT so we know that it has never been used as we have had confirmation of that from our phone company. Even when you take down the number they are calling from you cannot call them back as their system will not allow it, so no complaining! What does annoy me is the rudness when they know that you are not the person they are calling and they just slam the phone down, as they know you cannot complain. I think it should be up to the companies they are suposidly working for to have a bit more duty of care to any potential customers, as they say bad publicity travels quicker!!

You can always tell an Indian call center because they introduce themselves with very Asian sounding names, such as Elizabeth, Robert, Andrew, i even had a Catherine the other night. I've noticed they are very clear until they get to the company name they represent, then their enunciation goes all to pot.

Your complaint would be better placed with the company that is employing the call centre on their behalf.

They are probably unaware that some low paid monkey from india is causing them such bad publicity.

Tell them you are logging the calls and will be contacting the media with your complaints about the abusive telesales team the company is using.

I keep getting calls from an 021 number when i googled it it some scam indian callcentre who are trying to get you compo for an accident which ive had

ffs i not had one in last 3 years so dont know who selling them my details

If you're with BT and have to deal through them then all your details are out in India. There have been reports of Indian call centre workers selling details on. I just hope my problem last night is not just the start of it. I'm on the TPS as well but still get the odd bit of crap. It's the way my hub started faffing about that got me worried.

I find that the TPS doesn't work for Int' calls,they get through regardless!

Some years ago my wife was in a car accident, when we got the call from the same people as yourself (call center), i asked where they got the info on the accident, turned out it was the hospital she attended in Scotland. I only thing i don't know whether it was official or back door.

The law in this country does not apply to call centres in India. In other words, TPS stops UK call centres phoning you BUT not ones made from abroad.

I had one last night from 0291 916 554 - it's a company called Kingfisher Telecoms or something similar. He started with his sales patter so I told him not to waste his breath and to take my number off his system - he slammed the phone down. I was less than impressed!!

So, I've tracked the company down and found email addresses for them. Safe to say, they will be getting a very harshly worded email. I don't expect it will do much good, but at least I can give it a go.

Just for the record, I had cause to ring Asda delivery to try and chase my shopping which had not been delivered when I booked for. Their call centre is in India or a similar country too!! When I asked about it getting delivered, she asked for my card details again, the security code to be precise, so I said I wasn't happy giving it over the phone. I had to cancel my order and do it again, which meant getting it delivered 2 days later!! She asked if there was anything else she could help with and I said jokingly "Yes, can you let the dog out in the garden for me" - the answer was "I'll just hop on a plane and be there tomorrow".

I'm not impressed I have to say. I personally would rather the call centres were in this country. I refuse to give any of my details to any company that call. If they say they have my details but need it confirming for security reasons (and I know I deal with that company) I ask them to tell me what they have on their system and I'll confirm if it's correct. They never do. I then tell them that if they really want to get in touch, they can email me at the address they have on their system or write to me. If it's the correct company, they do as a rule.

We have sent several emails to some of the companies concerned but only get the usual patronising we are dealing 'with it' response. I suppose it would take a great number of people to bombard them with compalaints before they really do do something about them. I can imagine that a vunerable person could well be frightened by all this, especially if they had not had an accident!

The automated ones get on my tits too!! They seem to be happening more and more lately. Since my crash, I've been bombarded so I just tell them I'll report them to the SRA, MoJ and APIL.

Thank call centres are heading back to the UK!

I just play along for a minute or two and then give the phone to my 2 year old son to play with !

Two Good little tips off my dear old grandad - say yes I will just get him/her for you now and just leave the telephone on the side or number 2 just tell them to f**k off but I recommend the first option but two sometimes works lol

If you know you don't have any calls you know about, I play the sorry I don't understand you game, can you speak clearly,no didn't get that,sorry try again,no am sorry but I just can't hear you properly can you speak up,no didn't get that, I just carry on until they give up, they usually give up, I presume they get paid by results and a deaf idiot is a zero result, it works for me.

LOL. I play that game too.

On a sidenote, Santander announced last week that are moving out of India soon, back to UK call-centres, they are sick of the complaints they are recieving from customers who simply can't understand what the CS reps are saying, thanks to their Indian accent.

I don't mind the accent, what I find is that the training doesn't seem to be up to par in comparison to UK representatives especially regarding ISP tech support issues. They seem to be unable to think for themselves to take ownership of a problem and merely work from a script. Even when you tell them yes I have power cycled my modem, tried a direct ethernet connection without my router, rebooted everything etc and I'm somewhat of an expert in IT and networking they still insist on going through those stages again.

Regional accents can be just as bad, i had terrible trouble trying to understand a Geordie lad on the phone not long ago and i wanted to talk to him, i daresay he had problems with me, so its not only asian accents we have problems with, depending where these call centres are set up and how thick an accent is when recruiting someone, if i was recruiting here, I'm bound to understand the person I'm giving the job too, the problem is will people from other regions. I think all call centres should employ people with a northern Irish accent, i never fail to understand them.

I have a few Virgin Financial accounts (Mastercard, Visa etc) because they are prepay and so avoid overspend - especially for holidays, and by Jnr who is semi-resident in the USA but still funded from here.

I have to say that every time I have needed to contact Virgin Finance Customer Services eg when Jnr loses his card or the like - they have been ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT. Nice real-English speakers who seriously go out of their way to help. A total contrast to HSBC!!

Snod

My worst one was with the Tax Credit people in Preston, the bloke had an impenetrable African accent and in the end I gave up. Got the forms last week telling my that my Tax Credit was £0, remains at £0 and my withdrawal from the system is noted. The funny thing is that you are supposed to go through a stiff examination board to get in the Civil Service so how the heck this bloke got through I don't know. The mind boggles.

i just want an indian to phone me up now so i can have some fun haha

How!

Send me your number, i do a good impression of Geronimo.

Sounds like you need to change ISP. o2 have 24/7 staff (freephone as well, from landline and mobile), and as they always bragg about it, all reps are based in UK call centres, and all seem to be somewhat "geeky". They offer their own technical support service, for general computer problems etc, think its £7.50 per month, and its the same staff that do the Broadband queries, hence the reason they are trained properly and knowledgable.

Ive phoned up a few times, and had chats with them about geeky crap, during and after the problem resolution process. Found them to be very good their job - and British lol. In addition, they don't take offence, unlike many call-centres, when you tell them you are an IT professional, and have done pretty much all you can at your end to resolve the problem (ie. they don't start telling you to reboot the router, despite the fact you've informed them that you've already done it lol).


Strange, the only time ive ever got a non-British rep from HSBC, is in the dark hours (usually American too, sometimes Indian).

We've had similar nonsense calls 3 tmes this week (and we're in the TPS) the bloke keeps claiming that "from his records he can see that I've got spyware on my PC" how on earth would he know that?

Told him I was in TPS so he shouldn't be calling me and that his records were lies as he couldn't possibly know what was on my computer!

I have had this from an Indian woman. Bloody curry munchers!

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