When night falls in Manila, a wave of young people scurry into the skyscrapers which criss-cross the city. They’re call centre agents, and because most of their clients are on the other side of the world, the night shift is their busiest time. Last year, with more than 600,000 call centre workers, the Philippines officially overtook India as the world’s call centre capital. If you phone up to book a…

Bill Robbins was having trouble with telemarketers. Even though his number is on the government’s Do Not Call list, he was getting about four sales pitches a week.Exasperated, Robbins contacted his phone company, AT&T, and asked that his number be changed.David Lazarus E-mail | Recent columns “That tells you how irritated I was,” he said. “It’s a real nuisance to change your number.”Robbins, 82, of Eagle Rock, also specified that he didn’t want AT&T sharing his new number with anyone who called the old one, and that he wanted his new number unlisted.Bottom line: The man wanted to get as far out of reach of telemarketers as he possibly could.But just three days after the number switch, the phone rang.

The Federal Trade Commission said it had reached a settlement with two telemarketing companies that illegally called millions of consumers, banning the firms from the industry and requiring them to give up roughly $3 million in assets.The FTC said the companies made approximately 2.6 billion calls to consumers from January 2008 through August 2009 with prerecorded telemarketing messages about lower interest rates or auto warranties that were about to expire….

Fraud has globalised along with economies, a US federal trade commission official said Indian call centres were used to swindle millions of dollars out of Americans, say US federal officials. Callers from the Indian centres posed as “phantom debt” collectors who targeted people who had applied for small online loans. Originally from: Indian call centres ‘in US fraud’

An American call centre company is creating 600 jobs in Cardiff, it has been confirmed. Conduit already employs more than 1,900 staff across three centres – in Cardiff city centre, Cardiff Gate and Swansea. Its new centre in the Cardiff business district provides the homecare service for British Gas. Continue at source -  Call centre firm creates 600 jobs

Those aggravating automated telemarketing calls will be interrupting your dinner a lot less often. After receiving thousands of complaints from consumers, the Federal Communications Commission clamped down Wednesday on unwanted robo-calling by approving sweeping changes to its telemarketing rules for wireline and mobile phones. Even with the national Do Not Call Registry in effect — the initial effort to block those pesky calls — telemarketers have found ways around the…

Justices disagreed on whether lawsuits under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act should be filed in federal or state courts, but they agreed that the law was odd.

Plenty of people rely on a quick glance at their phone’s caller ID screen to decide whether a call is worth picking up. But caller ID is not foolproof. Regulators in many states have been hearing increasing numbers of complaints about spoofing.

Regulators are hearing more complaints about “caller ID spoofing” or “call laundering” by telemarketers.

Federal law protects cellphone customers from receiving automated calls without consent, but the government and industry groups want to change what “consent” means.