Having worked for Fasthosts

I can sympathise with some of the things that Anonymous Coward said above. While it is saddening to hear of the job losses, some of the points made rang true.

The vast majority of my time on the phone was taken up with helping people who need to be taught from scratch. Things like FTP, passwords, what a mailbox is etc.

As the majority of customers who use the support need this level of assistance that is what the majority of the support staff are trained to. Don't get me wrong there are some very knowledgeable people working for Fasthosts Tech support (or there were when I worked there during the great password debacle) but they get lumbered with what are considered the 'harder' support queries which tend to come from customers who have an idea of what they are talking about.

Because the work load is split in this way with a smaller percentage of staff dealing with the more techical issues you can see how customers with important queries that should only take a short amount of time to investigate and solve can be left hanging.

I think that this announcement shows that Fasthosts are takng a look at what they offer and how they can change it. There will always be a financial consideration ( I know of no business where they wouldn't be) and I'm not sure that sending support off-shore is the best plan but I have been proved wrong before. I do think however that having dedicated staff in this country for dealing with the more technical issues (of which the vast majority come from dedicated server customers and re-sellers) can only be a good thing and will IMHO improve the level of service to those customers.

Politics

Poli = many

Tics = Blood sucking insects

Says it all really

Whoa

Whoa whoa whoa, How am I supposed to know what a "Mailbox Control Panel" is?

Clue's in the name

Idiot

You can't polish a turd,

but you can roll it in Glitter

Reminds me...

... of Time Trumpet, the comedy show which looked at now from the future. According to the show in 2009 Blaine wired all his nerve endings up to the internet to allow himself to be controlled for two weeks.

The public killed him in less than 3 seconds.

Public Spending??

I foresee lots more admissions to mental institutions as ordinary people are caught walking down the street apparently talking to themselves on their bluetooth headsets and uncontrolably twitching their facial muscles

it does work. honest

I simply sellotaped a whole focus radio to my sky box and i now get every channel which has ever or can ever exist!