Lambo And The Indians

4
2019
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So, I’m doing this story for a major airline’s in-flight magazine. As part of the deal, I always provide the editors with high resolution photography to accompany the piece, usually by giving them my log-in and password info so they can access the car company’s Media-Only web site and download from there whatever they need.INDIA-RESUME-FRAUD-ECONOMY-FILES

One of the cars previewed in this piece I’m doing is the Lamborghini Estoque concept (which the word is will become a production car shortly). So I drop Lambo a line, explain the deal, ask them for media-access so my editor at the airline (a biggie) can glom some glamour shots of the car for the article.

I get a haughty note back from someone with an Indian name I couldn’t pronounce on a bet.  Not Sergio or Enrico or even Tony. Instead, I get Ashwini Chhetri from Slum Dog Millionaire Central.  Well, from TheNewsMarket, a “Definition 6 Company” located in (cut and paste time) Prahladnagar Road, Ahmedabad India.

Where’s Indiana Jones’ whip when I need it?

Is everything being “outsourced” to India and China?

The Indians own Jaguar and Land Rover. The Chinese own Volvo. And I’m now dealing with the unpronounceable and unintelligible.

Coffee’s not doing it anymore.

I need something stronger…

PS: We had a good month last month.  Dom and I might not end up living in a van down by the river after all.

Thanks to all of you for your support!

4 COMMENTS

  1. In the big picture it makes sense Eric. We are on a high speed track worldwide to nothing but unaccountable international corporate governance for all products and services we need and consume. Even local ones. As predicted by Buckminster Fuller (Critical Path) in the 60’s.

    They are outside of most governments ability to regulate, so don’t pay employee taxes like FICA, Obamacare, work comp, unemployment insurance etc. A poster child is GE, which pays no US tax while selling hundreds of millions of dollars of goods to US customers. The same for the drugs you get at the pharmacy. They are made with miminal safety standards in China, then shipped here with little or no libility for the product you consume.

    I can get a hungry WordPress web developer, who gets paid pennies and works at a corporation in India for 20% of a USA developer. Why not secretaries, food order takers and customer service? California Department of Transportation hired a Chinese corporation to build the new Oakland Bay Bridge between Oakland and San Francisco (9,260 feet long and 220 feet above the water) . The fix was in. The company constructed a crooked, rusting structure for “low bid”. How? Because they are an international Chinese corporation that had never built a bridge before, but who cares, palms got greased, that and no one will get fired.

    Our politicians have drained the pool and completely sold us out, while pretending to argue about he-said-she-said left/right politics to distract us.

    PS – Google (: will traslate and pronounce the words and names for you. Available as a smartphone app if I am not mistaken. Now who would have the forward looking thought to do that?

  2. I don’t really mind if the “customer service” person is in India, or on the moon… if they know their business and can get the job done, makes no difference to me.

    Unfortunately, my hearing impairment makes it very difficult to understand most people on the telephone… even if they have no accent and can actually speak English. With a heavy accent and a poor connection, we are both quickly frustrated. Luckily, the last few times I’ve asked the person if they have access to email and explained my hearing problems. These incidents had seriously positive outcomes because they could and did talk to me in email (or “chat) instead of slogging it out over the telephone. I refused to send personal information via the “chat,” and we eventually managed to finish our business in email. That’s still not secure, by any means, but a “chat” is so full of security holes it isn’t even funny.

    The very worst accent I ever had to deal with was a sweet southern belle in Georgia. I simply could not understand one word in five… and never thought about asking her if she could use email instead. Had to insist on talking to someone else and probably hurt her feelings, but the alternative was my going stark nuts, I’m afraid.

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