Offshore Outsourcing & Scammer

This week I have found an advertisement at LinkedIn: 

Wanted Centers for PPI & PBA
We provide Data dialer with voips experienced and new centers are welcome. Thanks

As there has been no contact address given and his profile did not have any contact address stored, I have dropped my email address in the comments. As a reply I got the invitation for a Skype conversation. The guy has been from UK and seemed to be a direct customer, but he even did not remember his own advertisement. 

First he tried that we are using our own data for dialing. I explained him that we are only dialing with data provided by our customer and we are not reusing this data for other campaigns. It will not make us trustful using data from one customer for another customer’s campaign.

After an explanation about the difference in the quality of data coming from local agencies to these ones, which are getting traded between the centers and which are already heavy used, he dropped the message:

"We provide them profiled data and at the time of invoice we deduct the price of data that we provide center"

At this time i decided to drop the business and send him to other centers.

A call center is working for the customer. If the customer does not have data, then this data need to get bought by the customer. If a customer does not like to pay the data, which are getting used only for him, already, then the full business is it not worth to get done. The most good address broker are selling the data only inside their country. If a customer likes to bill this addresses and maybe his own stock of addresses to the call center, than he will find thousands of reasons too, for not paying his bills. I don't need such a kind of customer.

Call centers are service providers. They need to work with the material that they get provided by their customer. If the customer likes to get quality, than the customer has to provide quality too.

Today I have found a nice complaint at an offer from LinkedIn. It shows how the scammer are scamming each other. It seems like a normal business for them.

Found at: https://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&discussionID=5899068376386396165&gid=3794594&goback=%2Enmp_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1_*1#commentID_null

hemanth rao

BPO Projects Out Sourcer
hi shanu hru u nicely escaped and because of u company which u worked is suffering here and u changed mobile no twice nice bpo business ur doing baby....very soon chennai will catch u enjoy till that time......

hemanth rao
BPO Projects Out Sourcer
very soon chennai cops will catch u.... ur providing fake projects to companies.....dont worry ur time is up and chapter is close .....very soon other new centers who gives comments on ur posting they will also come to know how big cheater u are.......

Shanu Thomas
Business Development Manager
ha ha what a joke which company is suffering because of me and my mobile number i changed you try once again it will ring only and if i am fake means you also fake because i was taking process from you only right hemanth.and chennai cops have lots of work y they will catch me you ran from bangalore to hyderabad and what is this new joke you are creatingyou people dont have any other work or what.and dont worry now i am giving process to those companies only who from previously working with me and they are working properly

Shanu Thomas
Business Development Manager
if chennai are suffering means because of you and sai ugainder not because of me and please dont start again all that fun again here dont worry i am not going to take your centers

Alagiri srinivasan
Managing Director at AERO WEB TECHNOLOGIES
hemanth wat about that pradeep process pdf to doc conversion u guys wont give work load and qc report also wats going thr . sai from ardent told me you guys will going to refund the amount but when u will do that.

Shanu Thomas
Business Development Manager
No one will refund money I also given center they told they will refund but not yet and now they blaming others centers are suffering

My recommendation:

DON'T PAY ANY UPFRONT HOWEVER THE FEE IS CALLED!!!

The broker/scammer are learning and thinking that $250 getting paid easier and without some requests than the fantasy sums from before.

Only the arguments have not changed:

"im not sure with that. thats always been the SOP. even our center here made the same arrangement to the client. the client has been with us for 3 years now and so happaned they are expanding. we tried to get centers before without the reservation fee but we were just burned. we made all trainings, installations of dialers etc and then on the first day or second day, center will just inform us that they cant push through. I understand your hesitation/s about the reservation fee, if your are not comfortable or okay with it its ok. once we have probjects that wont require reservation especially inbound, i will inform you both. "

My argument in this case:

• A real client, which like to outsource is giving everything for free, because he knows that he will save a lot  For this he even makes the training by himself or pays someone which makes the training.
  
  
• A customer needs to be happy that a center owner informs him that his campaign does not perform. That he needs to change the data or something else. If he has own staff it would be more expensive! 

We have in German a proverb: "Just as the rogue is so he thinks". In such a case think that you'll get scammed and ask for a security deposit for your own expenses.

See how a minimum security deposit gets calculated:

• The salary for the agents
  that is easily calculated. Simple add the gross sum of the salary including taxes and fees of all your agents together
  
  
• The place of the center
  If you pay rent than take a monthly rent of the place. If you own the place than you need to take the price of the building divided by 360 (30 years deduction of the value)
  
  
• The electricity
  That is simple to calculate. You know how much is the monthly energy bill
  
  
• The internet connection
  You know how much you pay for the Internet connection each month
  
  
• The investments of their technical equipment
  The technical equipment has an average financial life time of 3 years. So divide the value by 36 to get the value for one month
  
  
• The investments into their furniture
  Furniture and other investments are deducted to a zero value in 7 years, So you have to divide the value by 84

If you have calculated your own monthly costs, than you divide this costs by the count of seats you have to get the costs of one seat per month. This value you can easily use for all such offers. You simply need to multiply it with the count of requested seats in this case and add the value for the "up front", "security deposit" or however the fee to get the contract gets called. You can ask in such a case for an irrevocable bank guarantee about the resulting sum to reduce your own risks.

Alternative you can ask for a contract with the power of attorney, which has to get legalized if more than one country is involved. The fees for this process is carried in each country by the citizen of the country. Such a contract is able to get executed in front of the law court too.,

Account General Info -real state inbound- - word format(1).pdf (113.85 kb)

GUIDELINES FOR REAL STATE INBOUND CAMPAIGN APPLICATION.pdf (178.25 kb)

I got during the weekend the following email:

I’m one of your followers here in LinkedIn. We are a new call center here at the Philippines. We are currently dialing 2 outbound campaigns. But i think our current campaigns are not fitted for us. Our clients have positive feedbacks with our agents. But I think our income is not enough to cover our expenses.
We are currently dialing timeshare. For the month of January of the current year we had 60 confirmed appointments but only 14 showed up. Our expenses range for270k-300k. Income is not enough for us to grow. 

The problem is:

• You’ll not find for this kind of vacations a lot of people.
  
  
• Why should the people limit their self by making for the rest of their life their vacations at the same place?
  
  
• Would you buy something what you use once a year?
  
  
• If you rent a hotel room and have problem with the service, then you’ll change the hotel. With timeshare is this not possible.
  
  
• If there is nature catastrophe or an accident, which makes the beach unusable, then you would not make in such an area vacations. If you have timeshare, you have to pay in any case.
  
  
• If you like to make vacations at another place of the world, you’ll not save anything. Who knows what will happen the next minute. Why you shall make a decision now for the rest of your life?
  
  
• What happens, if the timeshare company runs into bankruptcy? You lose your money or your value too.

Such a product will get bought only from some stupid people. Especially if they have time after saying yes on the phone until going there, they can inform themselves about the system. In such a case they will not show up for making the contract.

I can only say the call center owner is guilty by himself. Maybe he has seen only the amount of the commission and not the product.

BROKERS; YOU MAKE YOURSELF UNBELIEVABLE WITH SUCH PRODUCTS!

CALL CENTERS, IF YOU GET SUCH OFFERS WORK ONLY ON A HOURLY PAID RATE!

For this we need to know first why companies like to outsource to offshore call center.

The answer is very simple. They like to maximize their earnings.  The average income in the high wage countries for telemarketer is around $20 per hour (Source: indeed.com from February 2015). Depending on the country are here additional expenses for the staff necessary. The real costs of a staff will be up to 50% higher than the salary of the staff.

A good and usable product is getting sold automatically if you present it in shops. There are other products like insurances, mortgages, etc. which are getting offered from brokers. Most of the insurances are offering combined packages, which are offering a discount. If the customer takes out one package of this group the price for the remaining things in the package will rise.

If a company offers a new combined package, then it has to have better conditions for the customer.  In this case the company needs to sell more of these packages to have the same winnings. No one gets money as a gift and the company needs to earn money too. This cannot be done by lowering the price for the customer without lowering the cost of sales too. The commission for the sales people will decrease for maximizing the profit of the company and their shareholders. Such a procedure results in a downward spiral in price and performance.

The costs for hiring offshore telemarketing centers are around at a quarter of the onshore prices. Mostly are their products simple not sellable or even the winnings not big enough for paying per hour. For this the most companies found here are offering only pay per sale.

This behavior is very short-sighted, because local people are losing their jobs. People, which have lost their job, have less or no money available. These peoples need to reduce their expenses too for having enough to survive until they find a new job. For this the companies are losing potential buyers. This is leading to the next downward spiral, where the products need to get cheaper and cheaper to get new customers. As nobody can offer the same performance for less money, the performance gets reduced too until the product is getting useless.

Such products shall get sold by using offshore call centers. In the most of the cases the companies are too greedy for supplying data (phone numbers and names) for the call center. The call center should even take the risk about the data. As the most serious data provider in the high wage country are selling data only locally, the international traded data are already heavily used and for this reason more or less useless. Nobody can perform with such kind of data.

The result is: SUCH COMPANIES ARE TO GREEDY AND DESTROY WITH THEIR GREEDINESS THEIR OWN BUSINESS!

You can use the following translation for the offers found here at LinkedIn or Facebook:

• Pay per Sale
  The provider does not believe that his products can get sold or The provider does not believe that the call center can sell the products
  Why in this case he likes to go offshore?
  The reason is mostly that it is the last try before running into bankruptcy
  
  
• High commission rate
  As higher the offered commission is as harder is it to sell the product.
  As higher the offered commission is as more useless is the product
  As higher the offered commission is as more financial problems the company has
  
  
• No data provided
  The call center shall even take the risk and invest into the data for selling the product.
  The company has not enough funds already to invest into good data
  
  
• Upfront payment, security deposit, etc.
  The company has not enough funds to pay the broker or to survive with out the payment of the "rich" call center owner. It is already too much what they are offering for this service.