Call centres in India have come under criticism again after a bank customer in the UK accused an Indian call centre worker of sabotaging his bank account.
LONDON: Call centres in India have come under criticism again after a bank customer in the UK accused an Indian call centre worker of sabotaging his bank account.
Twenty-three year old George Bates has accused an employee of the Abbey bank’s call centres in Pune and Bangalore of locking him out of his account and changing.
Bates, a carpenter, who rang the call centre to arrange an extra overdraft, claimed that the Indian employee was ‘very unhelpful, rude and arrogant’. Bates then took part in a follow-up survey to monitor customer satisfaction and gave the adviser the lowest possible scores.
The next day, Bates found he had been locked out of his account and his debit card was swallowed by a cash machine. When he visited the bank’s branch in Bristol he found that someone had changed his records so that he was now profiled as a 33-year-old Ugandan divorcee, his overdraft had been withdrawn and he had to pay £60 (Rs 4,850) in penalties because six direct debits went unpaid.
“The phone operator had obviously seen that I’d given him bad feedback and decided to change all my details in revenge,” said Bates. “His spiteful actions have caused me massive inconvenience,” he added.
Bates registered a complaint with Abbey, which eventually cleared up the mess, waived the penalty charges and offered him £200 (Rs 16,160) in compensation. But Bates has refused the money and shifted his account to another bank. “I am not happy with the service and the fact that the call centre Abbey uses is in India. I’m switching to a bank with call centres in the UK,” said Bates.
Abbey, which has three call centres in Britain and two in India, confirmed that an error did occur on Bates’ account. “We have since returned his account to the correct position and refunded charges relating to this error,” said a spokeswoman for Abbey.
“In relation to Bates’ other claims, we can confirm that we have fully investigated these complaints but we do not comment on individual employees,” she added. Abbey refused to identify the accused Indian employee.
There are an estimated 6,00,000 people employed in Indian call centres and Abbey is not new to complaints about shifting work to India. In 2004, Abbey had come under fire after announcing plans to close three UK offices which cut 1,300 jobs, most of them being transferred to India. The following year, after a barrage of complaints from customers, the former building society pledged to bring the jobs back to Britain.
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