Spiv-Blokes, a company that offers voicemail-to-text message transcription services, is under fire this week for copying the services provided by other companies in the sector.
A TV documentary team has discovered that Spiv-Blokes has taken the idea of automated voice recognition and transcription services offered by companies and created a sub-standard copycat service.
However, Spiv-Blokes CEO George 'Teflon' Trevallion claims that his service is completely different. "We don't use complicated voice recognition software or linguistic databases at all," he told us, "We exclusively use our 'Translation Services Centre' in Nuuk in Greenland."
The TV investigators have discovered that, far from a 'Centre', the Greenlandic operation consist of about five thousand jobless fishermen working at home. They have each been supplied with two mobile phones by Spiv-Blokes' local foreman, Steve 'Dodgy' Dodgeson. Their job is to listen to incoming voicemails on one handset and then text them using the other phone to the designated recipient.
Mr Dodgeson, who pays the workforce in cash, spoke with the TV journalists at some length. When asked if the operation was all above board and properly managed, he told them, "Everything's kuchti. You have to remember that employment law in Greenland is different from back home."
Questions about the security and privacy of the messages were answered by Mr Trevallion. "It's not a problem as we have extensive security procedures in place. We only employ people in Greenland who can't speak English."
