Rough road ahead for Hornby?

Same in Canada, where English and French are official languages. Outside of Quebec, French speakers are much less numerous than those from many other European and Asian countries. The City of Toronto provides public service information in over 20 languages - not including Welsh.

In Canada, people complain when their call to the phone company, cable TV company, bank, etc. goes to a call centre in India, or maybe the other end of Canada, where the operators have no local area knowledge.

I'm lucky that my cable TV company has its call centre here in Ontario, and when I call my bank I actually reach a person at the local branch.

The British government will probably take a major financial stake in Hornby and guarantee all its debts but continue to pretend they haven't actually "nationalised" it.

Meanwhile, the Scottish Parliament will demand that production of any Hornby models of interest to Scots is controlled by Holyrood Palace :o)

(kim)

Canada recently instituted a "do not call list" which makes cold calling illegal - unless you already have done business with that company. There are certain exemptions for charities, political parties, etc. However, we are getting an increased number of pre-recorded messages for cruises, condos, etc., which don't show a valid number on call display and usually hang up after 3 rings before the answering machine kicks in. They're not difficult to ignore, if you check the call display first.

I wonder how many people who do pick them up ever listen to the whole message; it's not as if you're hanging up on a real person!

On Sun, 09 Nov 2008 14:11:08 -0500, MartinS said in :

Same here. We've had "number withheld" barred.

Guy

First of all, I have set my phone service to reject all calls where the caller's number is withheld, and secondly my answering machine doesn't pick up until the eighth ring, so I usually do not answer the phone until the sixth ring.

We get obviously invalid numbers such as 123-456-7890 or 000-000-0000, other fictitious Area Codes, or sometimes just "Blocked Number" or "Data not available".

It's _very_ bad in the US.

They fake the caller ID which is easy using Internet phone services because it's all handled by software.

They use computers to do the calling even though it's illegal or soon to be, which remember when you are in to answer the phone so they keep calling the same time every day.

Basically, it's harassment.

If you press 1 to speak to a representative and ask them either why they keep calling or to put you on their do not call list they just put the phone down.

And very often they use call centres in India who don't even know that they're working for sleazes.

There's a web site about this, although there hasn't been much activity recently:

Because "Hi, this is Heather with account services" has been one of the worst offenders.

Fleischmann models are about twice the price of the Hornby equivalents and have you noticed how many of their competitors such as Arnold, Rivarossi, Marklin and Roco have gone bust or have been struggling in recent years? Also a lot of the price increase is down to the cost of raw materials and energy, and I bet the Chinese companies don't have to pay the same energy prices that the UK does.

And yes, Hornby has been on a price hike. Just compare their prices to those of the Bachmann equivalents.

Fred X

I disagree. Well at least about India.

Speaking with local (Aust) manufacturers, there is a 10% return on Chinese made products. On Indian, it is apparently near 90%. Plus there is the different philosophies, not easily understood but applying in many fields - for instance one manufacturer arranged for an (Indian) company to provide boxes for his models, to be forwarded to the model manufacturer (also Indian) for packing/shipping/etc.

When the model manufacturer didnt get any boxes, they contacted the Aust importer/entrepreneur. When he contacted the box maker, he was told they were waiting for him - in Aust - to provide the cardboard for the boxes ....

Theres always Bangladesh, or an African country that hasnt been tried yet.

Steve

In the software industry they were trying to move work out to india for years as at the time 12 programmers in bangalore cost the same as one in the UK. Think its down to about 8 now. Trouble is they couldnt find 12 programmers in Bangalore. They really are hopeless. Everything has to be spelt out exactly and even then theyre forever asking for help. Lot of people find it takes more time to give them work than to do it yourself. Then they all want to be managers and have lots of meetings. Theyre best programmer - a very senior one - is about the same level of competence as a junior programmer here. After trying very hard to close down our london office they gave up. Its not just the company I work for that has these problems, have spoken to a few people from others in the software industry as well.

Cheers, Simon

I imagine Bachmann will follow suit.

Hornby bought up Arnold/Rivarossi along with Jouef and Lima. What are they doing or going to do with the continental outline stuff?

They are selling it at around twice the price of British outline models...

According to a documentary the other night (might have been "Newsnight"?) things have changed somewhat. Indian graduates no long view the call centre as a "good job" (in fact the ones interviewed called it dull and boring, just like the UK!)and many have left, forcing companies to recruit staff with less and less English.

BT Fleet's Accounts Payable call centre is the worst I've come across, sad to say I literally could not understand what I was being asked for. It seems no one bothers ringing any more, preferring to write to the UK address instead.

Now if they really wanted to save money, why not have a secure web site - login, check their account status with you and then ask any questions with all the info right in front of you. Mind you, with the BT Tradespace farce I'm not sure BT are too well up in web usage ;-)

Cheers Richard

There's a decent catalogue full of products for last year and this - even products in shops, so I'm told!

Greg.P.

Exactly the same in Australia, except for one minor detail. The same people now come knocking on your door - no joking. There are now whole tribes of sub-continent people wandering the streets here at up to 22.00 now or Sunday dinner time. At least with the phones calls, you could just hang up. I can deal with them, but imagine how intimidated some of the elderly must be.

In that regard the "Do not call register" has been a disaster, as I suspected it would.

Amongst the worst offenders.

For the cruises, I listened the first time for about 15 seconds, nothing I heard would ever convince me to listen for as long ever again. It was so obviously bull. Do people actually sign up for these? The elderly or handicapped, I can sort of understand, but "normal" people?

Kevin Martin

On Mon, 10 Nov 2008 21:38:15 +1100, Kevin Martin said in :

My mate Jason, for one. He is a Monk of the lurker persuasion, and he goes on cruises because there is virtually no chance of being called up by ork while away. And anything worth the extortionate price of a satellite phone call, is genuinely serious enough to be worth dealing with.

Guy

"Jerry" wrote

Or do you mean they are 'offering it for sale' at around twice the price of British outline models? Wonder whether it's doing better than their UK models? There are some incredibly cheap Hornby offers around if you know where to find them - the new Rebuilt Scots & Patriots at less than £60 for instance - that's less than trade price.

John.

"Jerry" wrote

Or do you mean they are 'offering it for sale' at around twice the price of British outline models? Wonder whether it's doing better than their UK models? There are some incredibly cheap Hornby offers around if you know where to find them - the new Rebuilt Scots & Patriots at less than £60 for instance - that's less than trade price.

John.

Thanks. I know of only one shop in this part of Canada that sells European outline, and I haven't been in there for several years.