Offshore Outsourcing & Scammer

I know it is hard to bring quality if the broker or the customer thinks that everything is free and they need only pay for sales and not for the work, which is behind the sale and are even thinking that you need to take all the risk. The highest risk is their own product, which they are not able to sell by using a normal way like in a shop. Reject such offers like I have described it in “A LinkedIn offer where the broker likes to reinvent the slavery - David Goodstein”. The result of taking such an offer will be that you are destroying your own reputation. 

A good sale needs time. You are expecting a good quality work from your agents. Why are you making it hard for your agents by using such dialer where the called person hears a prerecorded message while you are connecting to your agents? 

If the caller gets it, that he is listening to a tape, he knows already that you nothing else than a Call Center. The sound of a recording is different than the greeting of from the agent even if the recording is from the same agent, which shall pick up the phone. That is not a technical issue it is depending from the stress and mood of the agent, which changes the sound of his voice during the shift. 

Use another system than such a dialer like described before. Your agents are not robots. Let the agent decide his own workflow and working speed. This will reduce the amount of called people over the phone per hour, but will increase the sales rate. Use a system like “Click to Dial” or “Code to Dial”. This can be simple done by your internal website with a button like “next caller” or by dial a code at the phone. In such a case the phone of the agent rings first and the VoIP System will dial the next caller in the list. Sure the agent need to wait until you reach someone, but the agent is already in the line and the called one does not hear a prerecorded message.

Let your customer provide the data of the people which you should call. Your customer knows better the target group of his product. For this he can make a better selection by using an address broker. Good address brokers in the US are trading their addresses only if you are using an IP-address from the US or you have a postal address in the US. The data, which get traded here from one center to other centers, are useless, because they got already used too many times. Good data are expensive, but your customer likes to sell his product. If your future customer does not like to provide data, than he is too greedy in any case and his product is from a very low value too. Such products don’t get sold good. In such a case you should take only the contract if he is paying per agent, hour, phone minutes, data and the necessary clean up against the “Do not call list”.

Make your own fair contracts and conditions for which you are working. These contracts, which I have seen until now from the brokers and customers don’t have even the value of the paper on which they will get printed. You have only duties and no rights in these contracts, which I have seen until now. They are only for ripping you off. If one point of your contract does not fit for your customer, than this point can get negotiated, but don’t let get yourself ripped off.

David Goodstein is searching for a call center at LinkedIn, where he can pull money, the call center has the risk and the work. The difference to the other scams is only, that the offer is very well described including the cheat (I have only picked out the most important parts):

• "The only thing the customer is responsible for is the monthly monitoring fee. The fee ranges in price between $39 and $60 a month"
  Sorry, who likes the monitoring? In a normal world is it this one, who asks for the monitoring need to pay for it. In this case is it the client, for whom is done the work!
  
  
• "You are responsible for your VOIP minutes"
  Your client is not able to pay the phone bill for the calls to the United States, which are normally traded at www.voicetrading.com for US$ 0.0052 and at www.voicebuy.com between US$ 0.0045 and US$ 0.0075 per minute. This is already too expensive for his customer. How would his customer pay the bill in this case for the call center?
  Sorry Mr. Goodstein, but you like to have a gift? Which gift gets the call center? At this world is nothing for free.
  
  
• "Initially (first 2 weeks) your commission is based off of completed installations only and not on a transfer basis (payout is $150 per installation)."
  Mr. Goodstein, do you really think that someone can survive with $150 for 2 weeks even in a low wage country? Do you really think that you can get someone, which takes the risk of your business for you? I think that nobody will be so stupid and accept such an offer.
  
  
• "We require you to use our Non - Voice Avatar like technology."
  Wow Mr. Goodstein, you like to make a test drive with your Avatar? In such a case you have to pay the agents per hour and not per lead! How the agent will be able to handle difficult and angry people? Mr. Goodstein do you have even recordings for this kind of people? How long is your list of recordings? Should the agent listen to the customer or permanently search for the correct recordings in the list?
  
  
• "After the 2 week trial basis, if we see your team is capable of sending quality transfers on a consistent basis, we will pay you $6 per transfer, with a 60 second buffer)"
  We have seen already that you are not searching for quality. But even $6 is too less, if you accept only 59% of the transfer, like you have sent it in the Excel file, which is attached here. In this case the $6 is only $3.54. Mr. Goodstein, we all know that the US south states lost the war for the slavery. Do you like to reinvent the slavery again?

In the night I got a LinkedIn message from Kaushik Ganguly, Business Advisor and Management Consultant for ITES - Call Center industry with 16 years experience A part of this email is:

"what if center fails to perform? what if center fails to retain campaign? what if center do not work seriously? what if center do not have financial strength to run center? what if center close down for other reasons? AND most importantly ... what if center choose not to pay consultant/broker after getting payment from client?? Those all happened in real life with many people

If center talks about giving monthly payment to consultant ... why they can't pay the way they pay to Chartered Accountant, VOIP provider, Dialer company, Lead provider and many others? Why always they make a big issue of paying to consultant ... when they know getting a good profitable campaign is 500% more important then getting audit, voip, dialer or leads!! "

It seems that this "Business Advisor" does not know for whom he is working and who is paying the bill! He did not learn in "16 years" of experience how business is done. That is the same way like you pay for an attorney to bring you into jail.

If he get's paid from the outsourcing company, then he is in need to verify the center to which he suggest to outsource. This cannot only be done by verifying the business register and the credit-worthiness of the center. That has nothing to do with any upfront fee or any other similar fee, however it would get called. As soon as he takes from the chosen center some money he is running into a conflict of his and his customers interest.

If he get's paid from the center, which takes the outsourcing contract, then he is responsible for the credit-worthiness of the outsourcing company and that this company is a real company. Here he has to do the same inspections and researches about the outsourcing company.

If his client, there is no difference if his client is the outsourcing company or the center which is doing the outsourced work, is a fake, he is in a very bad situation, because he is liable to his client and has to compensate his clients damage, because it his fault if he did his research not in full. In this case the "broker" or however he likes to get called, has to show his identity too. Hiding themselves in the anonymity of the internet show only that the is not real and nobody shall do any business with him. Everybody should know that you cannot reach into pocket of a naked one.

What he has written is true, but the word "center" need to get replaced with the phrase "all participating parties".

In any case his explanations are showing only that he is promoting not existing services or campaigns to get new centers, because he stated in his email that he is starting his work for a center not before he gets the order. This is called betraying and is a criminal action, which will get prosecuted.

Even his company iNanoSoft Outsourcing has no domain. The only result found in Googles history is iNanoSoft.de. It has be a software company from Germany, which is already closed.

The LinkedIn Mail communication:

I see my posting are getting read and my recommendations are not getting ignored. Some people like make themselves more important, than they are. They use some ideas, which they have read from my blog or postings and try to use it.

One of them is "leading"  a "big" call center with more than 1000 seats. By chatting with such a person, you get it immediately that have only a basic education (they are not guilty for it) and try to copy the ideas of other without trying to get the full knowledge.

They are calling themselves business man or business woman, but they even not know the requirements and the law situation in their own business. They have been even too lazy, to inform themselves about the requirements and result of such an idea. For this it has been coming to the following funny situation:

This is a part of a communication by using Skype:

He/she: we always notarize every document to be secure.

Me:  I'll search here notary office and let it certify

He/she: no need Rudolf. We will do it as one of my partners in our Firm is a Lawyer. 

Me: I don't know how they can certify there my signature. A notary confirmed signature has to be given in front of a notary. There you need to show a valid ID too. Otherwise you don't get a certification.

He/she: let me consult that with my partner and let you know about it.

Together with the schedule of the meeting, which should be 2 days later, I got the message:

He/she: Please send back the signed NDA that I have sent you as the document to be notarized and Client will not approve the meeting without the signed NDA. This is to meet the expectation. Thank you.

There are a lot of mistakes and misunderstandings:

• A notary’s office is not a law firm.
  
  
• Compare it by yourself. The definition of a public notary is found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notary_public. The definition of a lawyer is found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawyer
  
  
• A notary can only confirm in such a case a given signature. The signature has to  be done in front of the notary and the signer needs to authenticate himself. For this the signer has to go to the notary’s office by himself. A document or contract will even get registered from the notary including his confirmation in the public register, which makes it viewable to all, which are interested in it.
  
  
• A document, which should be kept secret, cannot get confirmed by a notary, because the notary needs to publish it for the case that someone needs to verify it. For this it does not make any sense to sign a NDA in front of a notary. The content of the NDA and the maybe possible contract will get published by the notary and lose by doing this his secret!
  
  
• Such a document has to get transmitted in original. A copy sent by email does not help. I think a lot of people know how to use Photoshop. The snail mail (traditional post) will not be so fast transmitted from one province to another in 2 days. So the appointment of the given date cannot get fulfilled, because the recipient will not receive it in time.
  
  
• In this case are companies from other countries involved. Documents, which need to get the power of attorney need to get legalized too. The legalizing process needs a lot of time, especially if the contractor is not living in the capital of his country. You need to go through all instances of your country for confirming the previous instance until you have reached the ministry of foreign affairs of your country. After this you have to go to the embassy of the country where the document should be valid. This embassy confirms the signature of the ministry of foreign affairs. After this you can send the document to your business partner. Your business partner has to take this document to the ministry of foreign affairs of his country. There he gets the confirmation of the signature of the embassy in your country. The document is not valid before all this steps are done. The document will be valid only for these countries, for which it got legalized. Don’t forget that each confirmation will cost you some money and a lot of time.

A full description of legalizing documents will get found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legalization_(international_law)

The best is coming at the end, where I said NO to the project:

I asked: Maybe you tell us the promotion for the project before everybody needs to run to a notary office. I think the country, the kind of sale, commission, payment terms, inbound/outbound and if data, scripts, etc will get provided or not will not be top secret.

The answer has been: Hi Rudolf, all info is in the SOW. NDA's purpose is to make sure that you will not disclose any information to other parties that might mislead. We protect the interest of the Client and the information it self. Hope you understand. Just sign the NDA and send it to me. See you later. Thank you.

I dropped the call center campaign as I don't waste time for any unknown business, where I even don't know the surroundings like inbound or outbound work, payment terms, data and scripts provided by client, kind of product, etc. With other words, everything what you get on information from a broker.

if such an information is already top secret, then can it be only a crime.

Call centers be aware from the “refundable” security deposit. All this offers are nothing else then SCAM. In the normal world a security deposit is given to this one, which gives a value, which cannot get retrieved fast (in leasing, rentals, etc.).

In the case of call center work the given value is the phone bill and the work of the agents, which cannot get retrieved. For this you are able to ask for a security deposit. Especially if the agreed billing period is longer than 1 week you should ask for a security deposit.

A security deposit should include the agreed counts of agents * hours of work during the agreed working time * hourly base + any payment for the broker! A security deposit can be done by an irrevocable bank guarantee, which needs to get accepted at your bank. Don’t start working if your bank does not accept the given bank guarantee. In this case you’ll never see your money.

Call center friends, don't get scammed, a contract should be only valid if you get your security deposit paid.

Definition of a security deposit from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_deposit):

A security deposit is a sum of money held in trust either as an initial part-payment in a purchasing process (often used to prevent the seller selling an item to someone else during an agreed period of time while the buyer verifies the suitability of the item, or arranges finance) - also known as an earnest payment, or else, in the course of a rental agreement to ensure the cost of repair in relation to any damage explicitly specified in the lease and that did in fact occur.

In certain taxation regimes a deposit need not declared as part of the gross income of the receiving party (person or corporation) until either the depositing party or an arbitrator agrees the funds may be used for the intended purpose.

A 1990 United States of America ruling[1] provides that a deposit differs from an advance payment because the depositing party has dominion over the funds and retains the right to insist upon repayment in cash. On the other hand, the party making an advance payment retains no right to insist upon the return of the funds as long as the recipient fulfills the contractual agreement.

The rationale behind the court’s decision is that the recipient of the deposit does not enjoy - complete dominion - over the funds and is subject to an express obligation to repay so long as the customer fulfills his or her legal obligations. Additionally, both the timing and the method of refund are largely within the control of the depositing party, as he or she can choose to insist upon repayment in cash or apply the deposit to purchase services. The recipient’s right to retain the funds of the deposit is contingent upon events that are outside of his or her control.

An important note is that although the recipient may receive an economic benefit from the deposits - i.e. interest - the prospect that income will be generated provides no ground for taxing the principal. However, any income that the recipient may earn through the use of the deposit money is, of course, taxable.

 

In leasing

Security deposits are required most often by lessors of automobiles, apartments, and commercial real estate.

The security deposits required by many residential landlords of their tenants are the source of much dispute and litigation. Many states and municipalities have enacted laws that specifically regulate the landlord's ability to withhold tenant security deposits after a tenant moves out. Some states and cities require that interest be paid to the tenant as it is earned on the security deposit.

In some legal regimes the deposit has to be placed with an independent escrow agent or licensed deposit taker such as a bank so that the risk of fraud is reduced and the funds earn interest at a fair market rate.

In the United States of America, Washington DC, Alaska, Illinois, and Wisconsin have notably more tenant-friendly legislation in place than states like Indiana or Michigan, for example. The cities of Madison, Wisconsin and Chicago, Illinois have in place substantially greater protection of tenants' security deposit rights than the surrounding areas.