The customer call center for Washington Gas is in the Philippines…go figure! No wonder I’m having difficulty getting an appointment to have the gas turned back on.

Washington Gas is a corrupt utility company that outsourced its front and back office operations to Accenture to save money so that they can raise dividends and keep the profits for management. By outsourcing to the Philippines, they got rid of 300 positions (that's 300 jobs for US citizens), and 50 of those jobs were open (hiring). They have a 10-year contract w/ Accenture and Accenture; instead of outsourcing them to Canada for example, where the people living there would have a better grasp of how the weather conditions (i.e. winter) really are and how heating is a matter of life and death for people living in that area of the United States, outsourced the operations to their delivery center in Manila, in order to squeeze out more profits from the Washington Gas account. That is Accenture. Cold. Calculating. Heartless.

The work ethic of the employees over there in Manila are terrible; they are just there for the money because the salary is higher than average. Because you're living in the Philippines which has third-world standards of living, the salary of a single call center agent working in the US can hire six Filipino call center agents. But of course, Accenture will NOT hire six agents. They will only hire one, and pay him standard, third-world paycheck. In the end, you get what you pay for. Third-world paycheck means third-world service.