Tri-City Herald Outsourcing to the Phillipines?

One of our Agents had the need to contact the Tri City Herald subscriber services department recently, and was surprised to learn that the Tri City Herald is now outsourcing their customer service to people in the Phillipines!!!  So if your paper is late and you need someone to bring it to you – you must first make a call to the Phillipines and the information will be routed to the Herald. What is wrong with this picture?

Has the Herald forgotten about all the local vendors and subscribers they serve? Their constant push for more advertising dollars from local vendors seems more than a little tainted when we find that some of those dollars are being spent across the globe instead of right here at home in the Tri-Cities.  They also outsource their renewal services call to several places across the country, as one of our secretaries experienced over the course of more than a year. 

There is something very wrong here for a local newspaper to profess it’s commitment to the community, yet won’t provide jobs to local folks who can obviously do the job – because they have in the past.  Somebody needs to explain this to us!