Trodhiem, I'm afraid that you are correct, the emails that are sent via AskBA go to the contact centre in Mumbai, and have for about a year and a half or more.

They used to be answered by the small internet team in NCL, but they now just get to pick up the pieces (such as the classic "BA do not currently fly from London Glasgow to Orkneys"! - The mumbai agent who responded had not heard of the Orkney's, nor did they know that we do fly there!)

BA has been using Mumbai for a number of non face-to-face contacts for quite a while now (they sort out CR issues, scan them into the system and forward them to the correct department, they also do seat and meal allocations, and a host of techie computer stuff.) and up until now there have been few problems.

I think that the main issue is that the staff in Mumbai cannot understand many of the nuances of the english language, I was told a story by one of the CR agents - how true it is I couldn't say...but after reading some of the responses it is possible - that a Mumbai agent sent an email to a customer saying how sorry they were that the customer had lost their Nan, and gave them the number of Lost Property at Heathrow! - This is an understandable mistake considering, but is this really the sort of service expected from BA?

It's probably the fact that I work in the call centre, and have worked in call centres for years, that I hate the idea of these jobs going to India, but until these sorts of wrinkles are sorted I can't support this sort of move.

Drbala, I will agree that many of the staff in these contact centres have more education than many call centre staff (including myself - I only have GCSE's, but I have 9 years of Call Centre and Customer Service experience, and also know the english language, but a degree cannot give people that sort of knowledge.

Worthless