Milo is going to visit the HQ, but is that Marlow or Cambridge? The big question is what % of messages are fully automated without human operators. How do you answer that with a visit to HQ? At HQ you can see how many people are busy working on ASR technology, but how does that help answer the big question? Wouldn't it be better to do what Nike does and let people visit the factories to see what the workers do and how they are treated?

Milo is going to visit the HQ, but is that Marlow or Cambridge? The big question is what % of messages are fully automated without human operators. How do you answer that with a visit to HQ? At HQ you can see how many people are busy working on ASR technology, but how does that help answer the big question? Wouldn't it be better to do what Nike does and let people visit the factories to see what the workers do and how they are treated?

I'll give them a month to pony up the goods, but after that I just could not in all good conscience support a service that is a) very useful to me but b) [apparently] runs sweatshops and can't talk to me straight. The danger of engaging the way SV has is that when you let people down, it disappoints and angers much more than if you hadn't engaged in the first place.

James is a great guy, as I'm sure most of the SV team are. And no-one wants to be in an industry that exploits people. This said, the laptop I'm typing this on, the clothes I'm wearing, the diesel in my car and the beads my kids are playing with are probably, at some stage, tainted by exploitation of people with no other choice but to take the coin.

If I take my money and give it to – er, bugger, no-one else does this sort of thing, OK – the local pub, then what of the call centre staff? Will they go on to a much better job? Or is the only alternative a Primark/Wal-Mart/Mattel hell-hole? What does that do to my self-justification? Am I being a bit too middle-class-hand-wringing-noddy here? Who do I/we think we are?

Gaa. I'm confused. FFS, SV management, pull finger and turn this train-wreck around. Or put it back on the rails. Whatever. Don't just sit there like a bunch of stunned mullets while your very useful business goes down the tubes for want of good comms.

/m

As a user, I don't mind the privacy problems, so much.

What I don't like is the thought of not knowing how the call centre workers are being treated. I won't buy Nike shoes if the company was still as secretive as SpinVox about the work conditions of the workers who serve my needs.

I'm off to start a search engine. Just finalising the algorithms err, third world call centres (that will never get paid).

Need £200m in funding. Western Union, anyone??

Hey, I got a talking dog! Thats right, a fu@#ing genuine dog that speaks plain English…go ahead ask it any question, it'll give you an answer in plain old English!

What? you want to see it…………………Err sorry cant actually show you the talking dog but you can speak to it down the phone line……… that good enough for you? ……. that'll be £200 million please

Oh, and then there's the operators themselves. I've spoken to two very senior people in two operators since this broke, and the same answer came back. “We were thinking at using SpinVox, but after this story broke there's no chance we want our brand – which we've spent millions developing and protecting – to be associated with a company/story like this”.

Shame really. I used to be a fan, but I feel like I've been lead up the garden path with precisely how good the technology was.

On a related note, here's an interesting stat. Whilst I've moved away from SpinVox and am currently trying out Vox Sciences, since the SpinVox story broke the amount of people leaving me voicemails of any sort has dropped by over 50%. I just get lots of missed calls now. Now either it's Vox Sciences being crap, or people are warey of leaving their personal details with what they (probably incorrectly) think is a sweat shop.

I think it's the latter.

However I'm not so sure about the management. And the way they've handled this one. I'm disappointed in them. So the jury's still out on that one for me. They've got a lot of fires to fight at the moment so I'm willing to give them some time to work it out. Then I'll make a judgement call.

In the meantime, Keep Calm and Carry On.