Dell Moves Call Centre Back to US

Dell is moving its call centre operations for the Latitude and Optiplex computers back to the US from Bangalore, India after an onslaught of complaints from dissatisfied customers who couldn’t cope with the differing accents and scripted responses. Is this the beginning of a trend where companies recognise that the quality offered by relocation to cheaper centres around the world doesn’t result in customer appreciation and better quality?

Baiting the Nigerian Scammers

I’ve known of the notorious Nigerian scam for years. The first time I actually saw physical evidence of the scam was when a letter arrived at work.

We were a small branch office, so everyone got to see the poorly photocopied document. One of the engineers said that they used to send them out of classy looking faked stationery. Not this scammer, but if was nice to see that they’d kept up the time honoured tradition of fake stamps.

The gist of the letter was much the same as the continual pleas from Nigerian widows you get in your inbox now. But at least they’d made the effort to match the content to our company business. Surprisingly enough the company did have business in the region mentioned, but contacting a minor sub branch halfway around the world for transfer of funds was never going to work when we had a head office who was constantly miffed over our stationery expenditure.

The Green Man has pointed out a group that goes out of their way to bait the scammers.

Dog Fight Over Length of Spaniel’s Tail

New York’s highest court has heard arguments in the case of a man who has refused to cut his dog’s tail for national competitions. John Hammer contends that the ‘docked-tail‘ standard violates state law against intentionally injuring an animal and constitutes illegal discrimination

Recycling Television Commercials

A young entrepreneur has gotten into the business of recycling junked TV commercials for clients with low budgets. TV ads cost anywhere between $50,000 and $1 million and small businesses usually cannot afford an original production. The company, Thought Equity, wipes off all references to the earlier company and makes the junked commercial ready for reselling with a price tag less than $10,000

Retooling Slashdot with Web Standards

Daniel Frommelt and his posse have recoded a prototype of Slashdot that uses valid, semantic HTML and stylesheets. Frommelt projects four-figure bandwidth savings in the candidate redesign, were it adopted, not to mention better appearance in a wide range of browsers and improved accessibility. Next he needs volunteers to retool the Slashdot engine. And yes, he did it all with CmdrTaco’s blessing

Bioclip Presents New Era in Wool Harvesting

For decades scientists and farming bodies have been trying to find alternatives to shearing for removing the wool from the sheep’s back. All sorts of weird inventions have come and gone but one, it seems could now be here to stay. Bioclip involves the use of an injection to break the wool. The product is now used commercially on tens of thousands of young sheep and within weeks Bioclip will announce that an international company will distribute the product throughout Australia

Yahoo’s ‘Opt-Out’ Angers Users

Internet portal Yahoo may want to think about changing its advertising slogan from ‘Do You Yahoo?’ to ‘You Do Yahoo’. In e-mail messages that began going out last week, Yahoo advised its users that their account preferences had been changed, by Yahoo, to indicate that they wanted to receive advertising solicitations through spam, snail mail and telephone

Robber Forgets to Cut Eye Holes in Mask

A masked man who robbed a Modesto bank Monday forgot to cut eye holes into his disguise, occasionally lifting up a corner of the flannel cloth to see his feet as he fumbled his way through the heist, and crashing into the Oak Valley Community Bank’s steel door frame on the way out. And yet despite his stupidity, he still managed to get away