Eastman Kodak ripoff ripoff rochester New York

Let me get this right, you're mad at Eastman Kodak Company because the vending machine price of your Single use camera with flash was 4 dollars more than the same camera at another place?

Did this first camera you bought work properly? I can see you being mad at Kodak if you received a defective product, but to be mad at the company because of the price you paid in a vending machine is quite a stretch of the imagination! If you went car shopping at 4 or 5 different Ford dealerships looking for a car and find differences in the price, would you then write a Ripoff Report about Ford Motor Company?

And by the way, vending machines are "Convenience" devices put in place so people like you can just put in your money, and out pops whatever it is you wanted. They also require people to come take the money and refill them, and repair them after too many people have pounded on them trying to get free product or because it jams after they drop in a bent coin, or a slug. Those people need to be paid, so there is an overhead that also contributes to the higher cost of the product.

I probably wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Eastman Kodak Company to respond to your complaint.

                Eagle

Well Stanley, obviously you do not know the capitalist system. You were "ripped off" by the owner of the vending route that you bought your Kodak camera from, not by the company itself.

The vendor bought a route as a business to make money. He buys the cameras at a given price and marks them up to the consumer to make a profit. The drug store across the street is probably a chain drugstore that purchases on a National Contract and gets lower pricing for buying in large quantities. Therefore, the drug store can sell the same item for less than a small business because they paid less for it in the first place. This is basically true for all consumer products from any company - and also why "Made in China" is less expensive.

Wholesalers buy directly from companies and sell to retailers also. Not every small company qualifies for a purchasing directly from large corporations. So there are large photo distributors that purchase in large quantities and resell to the smaller Mom & Pop stores - or vendors.

Having worked in sales for two major photographic companies, I have first hand experience in selling photographic and digital products to large chains, distributors, photo stores and labs.

The Wal-Mart type companies buy in huges quantities and pay less for their purchases than the small Mom & Pop store. Therefore, their prices are lower.

Your decision is who to support - the big chains or the small family owned operation that is trying to make a living just like you are. It's the way of the world.

Wendy
Florida

Corrupt Companies Submitted: 2/24/2004 6:48:42 AM
Modified: 4/1/2004 12:44:05 PM

Onsite Onsite is another slave labor Temp Company Rochester New York *UPDATE Employee ..inside information ..Sorry to loose you. everyone agrees with what you had wrote

Company
Onsite
Address:
30 Corporate Woods
Rochester New York 14623
U.S.A.
Phone Number:
585-350-2700
Fax:

Onsite KODAK and Heidelberg manipulate the labor market, In an effort to cheat people out of fair wages/benifit's

In an effort to cheat people out of fair wages/benifit's, companies like KODAK and Heidelberg hire temps for 90 days to 18 months.When the contract is up , they kick them to the curb and hire someone else(so on-and so forth).

They don't have to give raises, sick pay, benefits, or anything close to a living wage.

This works well for the share holders and CEO's that like to keep all the profit's for themselves.And since the wealthy support the polititions that make and enforce the rules, the common man has no choice but to take these "Slave Labor" job's - or starve.NAFTA is a perfect example of politition's screwing the common American.Over 2 million jobs have been lost thanks to NAFTA.And with that shortage(it's a man made shortage; created by our government) of job's, companies can pay people less and get away with it (the "take it or leave it" attitude).

If anyone is lucky enough to have a job, they need 2 to 3 of them to survive; unless they can get a grant to go to school.

And if you are not a foreigner/black/pregnant female; in most states you are not going to get any help with college.I am for equality; I am against "Selective Privelage".

My final thought is TEMP COMPANIES ARE THE LEGALIZED SLAVERY OF THE 21st Century.

Pete
Spencerport, New York
U.S.A.



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Rebuttal UPDATE Employee ..inside information
Submitted: 2/27/2004 6:50:26 AM Modified: 2/27/2004 9:37:55 PM

Sorry to loose you. everyone agrees with what you had wrote



Pete,

I just heard today that you had to quit last Friday, I'm sorry to here that. I got your address off the letter you wrote, It has been passed around and copied and everyone has read it and agrees with what you had wrote.
Pete you are right, we have lots of lazy a*s people here that need a wake up call. Sorry to loose you.
Take care going to miss ya, Hope to see you again sometime.

Regards,

Heidelberg Digital L.L.C.
Process Engineering

Peter J. Minurka - Rochester, New York
U.S.A.

Rebuttal UPDATE Employee ..inside information
Submitted: 2/28/2004 11:27:56 AM Modified: 2/28/2004 11:00:45 PM

Pete, You really stirred the pot good this time

Date : Thu, 26 Feb 2004 15:38:43 -0500

Pete

You really stirred the pot good this time. I think you ought to sit back and let
things settle down I got your letter and so did everyone else. I know management
Deb Cox and above are looking into things here. Please take my advice and let
things sit idle for now.


PS Willie says to start growing a beard and maybe you'll get a ticket.

Emmett

-----Original Message-----
From: XXXXXXXXX@juno.com [mailto:petehelfrich2000@juno.com]
Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2004 12:19 PM
To: Chapman, Emmett HDi
Subject: Re: Beautiful-Which one????

I sent one(letter in the mail) to Deb COX(about why I quit) ...I would like to
send one to Rutiger(LAST NAME???HELP ME OUT>??)-And any of the other "Head Honcho's" you can think of, that would like to know about what a
lazy turd Pawlo is??I want to get that Pawlo's can in a sling, if it's the last thing I do!!

I also sent you a link to the rip-off report..

I just sighned up for an online web design course!!!They have job placement
-upon completion!!When I complete it; could you gather a list of H.D references
for me??I'll try to find a way to get you some beef jerkey-as payment for your
services..

Tell every one I miss(Ray,Rick,Ed,LISA-O-LISA!!LOLMary ect...)-that I miss them,
and to all those opposed:
F--K O-F!!!

Ask Willie- if he can get me discount ticket's to Farm Aid???I'm on a budjet..

My Mother(Emmy)said hi..

Later:
Pete Helfrich

Emmett - Rochester, New York
U.S.A.

Rebuttal UPDATE Employee ..inside information
Submitted: 3/1/2004 4:19:51 PM Modified: 3/1/2004 11:43:39 PM

A definite case for harassment and DISCRIMINATION

Here is the letter sent to Heidelberg Management and Human Resources.

Hello Deb:

I wasted 6 years of my life at Kodak; and in that time I learned why they are shrinking and fading, while companies like Fuji and Canon take what Kodak started, and "One Upped them"/shifted the market in their favor.They(Fuji, Canon-etc.)were underdogs that had drive and desire to win.Kodak was full of smug/lazy clowns that never read about the history of the Roman empire.Since H.D took over Kodak's problems with the copier division(mainly the workers that spend 20+ minutes of every hour, in the summertime smoking their way to a lung transplant; rather then working)-the lack of effort has reared it's ugly head time and time again.People like Pawlo Bezduch and Andy the Kamikaze Polish Pimp spend more effort finding ways to push work on other people, so they can goof off and hide their blatant lack of effort by trying to make other people appear to be incompetent.Obviously it has worked for them, because they have managed to dodge the Layoff's time and time again; while other people much more deserving of keeping their job, got kicked to the curb.Another common thread that has transcend Kodak and H.D is that management allows he treatment(by some of the other workers-LIKE PAWLO
Thank you for your time:
Pete Helfrich

P.S: If you care to verify my claims about Pawlo and Andy, just ask:
Emmett, Ray, Mitch, Bill Bain, Rick, Ed, Erica, Kathy M, Christine, Mary..They are Full Timers that have no reason to lie.


Here is a letter to Onsite Company, in regards to harrassment substained by Peter Helfrich

Hello Hector:

I have been having problems with a co-worker at my job(Tina Baxter).Basically she is very rude/bossy and lazy(and the first to point a finger at someone else-when they make a mistake-BUT-if she makes one it's ok).She has blown up at me in front of people on numerous occasions.I have begun to record the dates/times and what was said.I have talked to other people there -and they know she is trouble.She refuses to follow the procedures set by our supervisor.When confronted with why she does this, she tries to blame it on either myself: or others in the group.Obviously, she is in the "Bill Dumas Fan Club" because she has gotten away with goofing off and jerking people around for over 5 years now(and missed the last round of layoffs).Whenever someone else has gone to him about her-it get's swept under the rug.

I have talked with Mike about the situation(the other supervisor -over in the black and white copier building(11) department).He knows I'm a good worker and would be glad to have me over there(as soon as more machines are needed to be produced).The difference between my area and the production area is "Night and Day".

ALSO:
In my area most of the smokers take 30 min breaks(when they are only supposed to take 15 min breaks).They smoke there brains out whenever they feel like it,and when the work fails to get done: they try to blame it on the contractors!!They are the laziest bunch of people I have ever dealt with.There are some hard workers there(out of the group),but they can't carry the load by themselves;so we constantly miss our "Work Quota" and get our asses reamed out by our supervisor.The stress of that daily is not worth the measly $9.50 per hour/NO MEDICAL/NO BENIFITS..ECT.Most educated people know that one cannot buy food/pay rent/own a car on $9.50 in this over taxed state.Not to mention the shrink + ulcer medication I'm going to need if I have to continue to deal with Tina and a few of the other lazy jerks in that area.

If it was possible for me to transfer(I have built computers for myself and friends-what could be any different about copiers??)over to the other department,that would be great.If not,I will start looking for a new job soon.And if Tina continues to jerk me around,I will be forced to seek legal action to arbitrate the situation.

Thank you for your time:
Pete Helfrich

Peter - Rochester, New York
U.S.A.


Rebuttal Consumer Comment
Submitted: 3/2/2004 12:38:56 PM Modified: 3/2/2004 10:56:03 PM

Not all Temp agencies are scum

Although I feel for your specific situation, I think you are not qualified to make the statement that all temp companies are slave labor. I happen to be the director of operations for a reputable company. I would hardly call a minimum of $8 per hour slave wages. I have Light Industrial warehouse temps making $17 dollars per hour. I do agree there are some companies out there who benefit greatly from slave wages. The "work today get paid today" companies. You work 10-12 hours per day and get paid $40. I think you have quite a few valid points. It is hard for some companies to refuse people who are willing to work for $5.50 per hour. I think that if you pay quality wages, quality people will follow. You have to understand too, that if a temp agency gets into a facility that is union, you are binded by the union rules. 30-60-90 day maximum. Lastly, People have to realize that when you go to a temp agency for employment, benefits are rare. It's no secret. You will have to obtain employment the "traditional" way for those type's of perks. It is tough all over the country right now. Utilize this time to go back to school. You do not need to be black, Pregnant or on welfare to receive grants and scholarships. You need to just be in financial need. If we as a country, would rise above what it takes to just get by, we would all be more successful. I came from a low income family, but chose to take advantage of what my country had to offer. I rec'd loans and grants for school and now have a job that affords me and my family a comfortable existence.
I wish you the best of luck in the future and remember, pick your head up and make yourself a marketable employee.

Gina - Warminster, Pennsylvania
U.S.A.

Rebuttal UPDATE Employee ..inside information
Submitted: 3/3/2004 7:24:57 AM Modified: 3/3/2004 3:21:32 PM

Heidelberg, ONSITE (Changed their name to AEROTECH-go figure)Are cheating good workers out of a living wage

patrick tomai Save to Address Book

Subject : a friend of Pete's from heidelTURD

Date : Wed, 3 Mar 2004 05:46:57 -0800 (PST)

Hey buddy it's Pat from heidelberg. Let me 1st start off by saying congratulations on a letter well written my friend, that was awesome and it was very truthful. I also want to say thank you for standing up for us contractors, as a matter of fact because of your letter we all got a 75 cent pay increase... naaahhhhh just kiddn. But seriously you're right about us contractors are expected to work twice as hard as the regulars and get paid a fraction of what they make, that's bull. You've given us stuff to talk about here and make our days a little more interesting but it is very unfortunate to see you go. We all miss you already. By the way don't lose contact with me because I still would like a workout partner. Al right Pete well break is over now and someone has to do some work around this joint. Take it easy and don't be a stranger.
Your buddy,

Patrick - Rochester, New York
U.S.A.

Update Submitted by the original author
Submitted: 3/8/2004 9:12:58 PM Modified: 3/8/2004 11:45:00 PM

Patrick was fired for speaking the truth.. It was a corporate ploy at keeping the "Temp Slaves" compliant.

I have been told by a reliable source(I dare not speak their name, because Heidelberg, Aerotech, and Kodak are monitoring this site daily, firing people that oppose their oppression of Contract Workers)that Patrick was fired for speaking his mind about the way Contract Workers are being treated at Heidelberg Digital.

I have also received emails from others that have spoken their opposition to these companies treatment of Contract Workers, wishing to recant their statements, due to pressure from upper management.They have been told to cease contact with myself, and this site - or be fired..

This conduct only supports my case against Heidelberg and Onsite(Now Aerotech..It's funny how Temp Companies change their names like a football player changes jock straps, after a big game..Makes you wonder; do they have something to hide??Criminals have been know to change their name-to avoid being caught for past crimes)....As far as I am concerned, the way Onsite and Heidelberg treat their workers; they(the "Fat Cats" at the top should be brought up on charges:

#1:Cheating people out of equal wages..

#2:Making Temp's do the bulk of the work.

#3:Firing and threatening workers that oppose improper treatment of their fellow co-workers.

#4:Using and abusing the current system(hiring people on As a "TEMP" for 18 months-kicking them to the curb, only to hire another person to take their place: TO AVOID PAYING BENIFITS /RAISES /SICK PAY HOLIDAYS!!)..

H.D and Onsite are crapping in their shorts right now...They have never had anyone stand up to them..

I want to that people like Patrick - who stood up for me, and paid the ultimate price..
The truth is in the open, and on the world wide web-for all to see..

People can show their opposition to the companies(H.D, KODAK and ONSITE)

by refusing to buy their products and services..


And by spreading the word about how they treat people unfairly.

Pete - Rochester, New York
U.S.A.

Rebuttal UPDATE EX-employee responds
Submitted: 3/25/2004 3:39:08 PM Modified: 3/25/2004 11:37:41 PM


Kodak and Heidelberg's tactics force good people to a life of crime.


Hey man, no I did not find a job yet but I'll probably be going away for a while. My girlfriend is 8 months pregnant and after heidelberg fired me, I was really stressed about the whole money situation so like an idiot I went out and started stealing cars. I got away with it at first but I finally got caught Tuesday morning. Now I got this s**t to be stressed about. I'm not going to be able to see my daughter being born and I'm coughing up more money than ever for this crap, I guess I deserve it though. A life of crime doesn't pay. I was all over the news and radio but I don't feel good about it. Oh well maybe I'll talk to you when I get out. See ya.

Patrick

petehelfrich wrote:


Hey Pat:
How have you been?? I hope you have found a job, I'm still looking..
Drop me a line sometime, and let me know if you like my web-site: http://petes-photo-art.150m.com/index.htm ???

Later:
Pete
MY TWO CENT'S:

This is becoming more common today. As NAFTA sends jobs overseas, and Americans are forced to work for 1/4 of what it cost's to live; people are resorting to crime, in order to feed their family's. when will the Corporation's and our Government be held accountable for this rampant diease that they created???

Pete - Rochester, New York
U.S.A.



Rebuttal Consumer Suggestion
Submitted: 4/1/2004 7:09:46 AM Modified: 4/1/2004 12:44:05 PM



The outsourcing debate: A tale of two cities



My two Cent's:

The next time you think about why you are unemployed, think of who you voted for. 50% of the U.S population don't vote. Regan, Bush #1, Clinton , and Bush #2-- have sold us out to NAFTA and foreign interest. Most of our "American" companies
are heavily owned (they bought their way in, by buying stock in the company) by rich people that live in Japan, China, India, and other third would countries.

The Democrats and Republicans don't care about the Middle class. They like the idea of just "The Rich and the Poor". It worked well in England 200+ years ago. If you check your history, that's why we left to come to America. We were sick of being over taxed slaves. Guess what? Here we go again...
Check out VOTE NADER . COM

Listen to what this man (Ralph Nader) has to say. He has no reason to lie, he has all the money he could want (so why would he need a payoff from a Foreign intrest group??), and he actually cares for the COMMON MANS WELFARE; NOT THE RICH MAN.
If the 50% of the population that did not vote, gave me their vote, we would all have jobs; instead what we have is the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.


The outsourcing debate: A tale of two cities
Who loses and who gains from U.S. jobs moving overseas?
By Kerry A. Dolan and Robyn Meredith
Updated: 6:34 p.m. ET March 30, 2004

Sarah Beaver rode the bubble at Cisco Systems, building her career as a Web producer in five years at the once-roaring maker of network routers. She managed to lift her salary to $60,000 a year and save enough cash for a down payment on a new condominium. She was closing on the condo last April when Cisco laid her off. "I panicked. The first person I called was my real estate agent." Beaver, 36, moved back in with her parents in Stanford, Calif.

advertisement
While she was moving, a contract worker for Cisco, toiling 8,700 miles away in Bangalore, India, was busy buying his own house at age 25 ? and a home for his parents, too. Now 29, Stawan Kadepurkar has put in six years with Infosys, working mostly on projects for Cisco ? in Dallas, Portland, Ore., Hyannisport, Mass. and even at Cisco's base in San Jose, Calif. He could have bumped into Sarah Beaver in the hallways there. In that time his salary has risen fourfold, and it is up 15-fold since he took his first job out of college in 1995. Despite that surge and his role overseeing 25 workers on three Cisco projects, he earns all of $20,000 a year.

Beaver and Kadepurkar represent two sides of the most controversial and divisive issue in economics: offshoring. Crushed by the tech-spending crash that began in 2000, many of Silicon Valley's giants and dozens of companies elsewhere have imposed layoffs at home and hired cheaper talent in India, China and elsewhere. Suddenly this job drain is a central issue of the presidential campaign, prompting calls for new protectionism and providing fodder for the pulpits of cable news and the front pages of newspapers.

America is at war with itself
Firms here need the latitude to compress costs by shipping labor and production to ever-cheaper markets offshore. Yet American workers need to protect their livelihoods. Caught in the middle ? and exploiting the hell out of it ? are outsourcing firms in bootstrap markets, eager to serve U.S. companies and their customers. In the ensuing outcry, Senator John Kerry calls offshoring U.S. firms "Benedict Arnolds," while CNN anchor Lou Dobbs hammers job-exporting "offenders" nightly. Thirty-one states have proposed antioutsourcing legislation, and the U.S. Senate has voted to ban the practice for federal contracts.

Related stories

* Forbes: An American revolution ... made in China
* Snow: Outsourcing can help the economy
* Study: Outsourcing tech jobs a plus

Whatever the economic wisdom of such legislation, it seems unlikely to stop a powerful trend that makes many kinds of service jobs as readily exportable as factory work. "What we are really seeing is the unintended consequences of globalization," says Nandan Nilekani, chief executive of Infosys, one of India's outsourcing giants. Some benefits are clear-cut: a better bottom line for businesses, higher returns for investors, cheaper services and $80 DVD players for Americans.

Catherine Mann of the Institute for International Economics makes the case in favor of offshoring: High-tech hardware would have been 20 percent more expensive in the 1990s if not for offshoring. This spurred investment in more high-tech gear, boosting productivity and freeing up cash to plow into still more innovation. Plus, for every dollar spent on offshoring, the U.S. gets back $1.12 (and the global economy reaps another 33 cents), says a report from McKinsey consultants. Think about it: As more workers in India land higher-paying jobs, they can afford to buy more U.S. products, from

processor chips to Hollywood films. By spreading the wealth, offshoring makes life a little better in some of the poorest regions of the world.

For the case against, listen to almost any politician talk about unemployment.

To examine the two sides of the coin, FORBES tracked down a dozen Americans laid off in the Valley because of offshoring, plus a like number of workers who gained some of those jobs in Bangalore, India's offshoring hotspot.

In the U.S. some casualties of the offshore wave remain bitter and financially devastated. "I could understand if this was benefiting us, but people are losing their homes," laments Odell Williams, who has applied for 300 jobs, unsuccessfully, since EDS laid him off in July 2002. At Milpitas, Calif.-based PalmOne, manager Natasha Humphries spent two weeks in India training workers in software testing ? then got laid off in August, replaced by one of her trainees. (PalmOne says Humphries' work is still being done in Milpitas.) "They used us and then discarded us," she says angrily.

Some people have given up on tech
Patrick Roney, for 15 years a consultant to Apple manufacturing sites, got laid off in late 2001, displaced by Indian contract workers, he says. (Apple won't comment.) Last year he took to the road, spending three months as a truck driver ferrying things like beef from Nebraska to New York. In February he landed a temporary software job. Michael Clapperton, formerly an infotech manager at Cadence Design Systems in San Jose, saw his layoff coming. He is now selling insurance on commission. His $10,000 monthly paycheck has shrunk to $2,500. It will go up, he says, and he won't have to worry about being laid off ever again.


CNBC SPECIAL: THE BUSINESS OF INDIA
? India still faces several challenges
? India, China are allies and rivals
? Prosperity creates a new market
? India's industries have global goals
? Entrepreneurs thriving in India
But other fired techies are steeled by adversity. After Cisco cut her Web-producer job last April, Sarah Beaver vowed to stick with tech. After much digging she landed a $4,500 federal grant for retraining and used it to learn Javascript and other Web-design skills. "It made a ton of difference, at the very least in my own confidence." She has landed a temporary job at a unit of Apple, earning 20 percent higher pay and hoping it becomes permanent. "I feel like I've found a place where I can use my creativity," she says.

In Bangalore the job-gainers are proud of their upward climb and eager to keep on advancing, echoing sentiments of the American Dream. Some express sympathy for the Americans whose jobs they took and say the U.S. will figure out how to navigate this wave. "The U.S. is resilient enough to get out of this," says Stawan Kadepurkar, the Cisco contract manager in Bangalore. Biotech, he says, is going to provide millions of jobs in the next few years.

In three years the U.S. has lost 400,000 service and 1 million manufacturing jobs to offshoring, Goldman Sachs says. Some 3.3 million white-collar jobs (and $136 billion in wages) will flee the U.S. in the next ten years, Forrester Research says. All told, up to 14 million U.S. jobs are vulnerable to offshoring, say researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. Another problem:Even when American employers don't move jobs to India, they have virtually stopped creating them in the U.S. when the tasks can be done more cheaply abroad. The U.S. service sector is 6.2 million jobs shy of the hiring that typically accompanies an economic recovery at this stage, in part because of the move overseas, says Stephen Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley.

In Silicon Valley 200,000 workers have lost their jobs since 2001, albeit only 6,000 of those jobs headed overseas, Stanford University researcher Rafiq Dossani estimates. But that number will grow, he says, as the offshoring pace accelerates for jobs in software programming and product development. Already 150,000 engineers hack away in Bangalore ? 20,000 more than in Silicon Valley, the Times of India reports. Cisco used only a few Infosys workers in Bangalore six years ago; now it uses almost 300 contract staff, plus 550 full-fledged employees in its own Bangalore office. In two years PeopleSoft's Bangalore offshore force has grown to 200 freelancers and 350 full-timers.

Jesal Mehta has worked both sides of the offshore surge. Twelve years ago, fresh out of university in Gujarat, India, he landed a programming job in Bombay for a contractor serving U.S.-based Tandem Computer. He worked long hours for low pay in American terms (about $100 a month), but he was among the highest-paid graduates in his class. "It was a royal time," he recalls.

In 1994 his employer, the big Indian contract firm Tata Consultancy Services, shipped him to Cupertino, Calif. to work for three years at Tandem developing software. He went back to India for 18 months, then returned to Silicon Valley and in 1999 began working ? as a full-timer on staff ? for Novell in San Jose. Mehta loved the job, the people he worked with and his U.S.-scale pay: He was making $112,000 a year. He and his wife, also a software engineer, bought a house in San Jose and had a baby girl. At night and on weekends he earned an M.B.A. at Santa Clara University.

Then Novell laid him off last June. Colleagues told him his job was moving offshore ? back to his home country of India. (Novell won't comment.) A day later, though, Mehta was hired by a friend to work at his U.S.-based software firm, Cignex, which in turn contracted Mehta out to a Redwood City, Calif. software company. So Jesal Mehta has come full circle. In his current duties as an implementation manager, by day he talks with customers who want to purchase the firm's legal-contract software, trying to customize the software to meet customers' needs. Then, sometime after 9 p.m., he calls Bangalore to talk to the contract developers at an outsourcing firm called VMoksha. Sometimes they call him in the middle of the night or on weekends. "When you are up against customer deadlines, you can't tell the guys in India, 'Hey, I want to go back to sleep,'" he says. Plus, he identifies with them, given his own start: "I feel like I'm one of them."

Mehta knows he was lucky to land a new job so quickly, and he empathizes with unemployed Americans. "People who are laid off are never going to be happy," he says. "They want to blame somebody." But he believes that if his adopted nation ? the U.S. ? opens its borders, jobs will move across them in both directions. And over all, that's good for the economy. "There's entrepreneurship in this country to create new jobs," says Mehta. "The U.S. can withstand this."

At VMoksha in Bangalore, group manager Sohraib Italia, 41, has followed Mehta's steep climb up the economic ladder. His father was the chief financial officer of a jute products maker. He now earns five times as much as his father did a generation ago. As a child Italia dreamed of going to America. In 1986, when he graduated with an accounting degree from a school in Calcutta, he got a job paying $800 a year at a big tea broker in the same city. India was still a tech backwater then; he had to wait 18 months to get his first phone installed. Now the country rings with 30 million cell phones, with 2 million more added each month. In the early 1990s Italia earned $4,000 a year as a finance manager for what is now GlaxoSmithKline. His pay quintupled when he joined Oracle in 1997, and it nearly doubled again three years later, when U.S. tech company I-Gate hired him for its Indian operations. That job fed his dream of seeing America, placing him for monthlong stints in Pleasanton, Calif. (for PeopleSoft) and in Pittsburgh (at I-Gate's base).

When VMoksha started in 2001 in Bangalore, Italia was one of the company's first hires. His colleagues are the ones who keep Jesal Mehta on the phone late at night back in San Jose. He now earns $37,400 a year, which makes him a rich man in Bangalore, where a luxury three-bedroom apartment rents for $500 a month. Full-time housekeepers and cooks, earning just $55 a month, are commonplace among the middle class. Cell phone service starts at $5 a month, cheaper than land lines.

Some of America's cash comes right back
Middle-class Indians now munch on McDonald's fries, wear Guess and Gap jeans and drive Ford sedans. In a land where a car used to be a luxury, the roads are now clogged with traffic ? much of it headed to parking lots at India's tech giants of Infosys, Wipro and Tata, and to the offices of the U.S. companies that have set up shop in India.

The new jobs tend to employ nearly equal numbers of men and women, altering India's social dynamics. "Before, it was all arranged marriages. Now, we have a lot of office romances," Italia says.

What's next for Italia? Under a VMoksha contract he is supervising a pilot project for another U.S. company, Authoria, debugging software. Just 5 VMoksha employees work on it now. In six months that offshore staff will grow to 20.

Michael Huston figured his job at Hewlett-Packard in Cupertino, Calif. was safe. For seven years he had worked on software for big servers, complex stuff for which few people had the right skills. He was pulling in $110,000 a year and had survived two big mergers (Tandem got swallowed in 1997 by Compaq, which in turn disappeared into H-P in 2002). In 1998 he had his first brush with offshoring when he and a boss spent a month training a few programmers visiting from India, advising them on spooling software used to send documents to printers. His team had completed development but not testing, and that task moved to India that same year (which caused no layoffs).

But H-P wanted to squeeze 15,000 jobs out of its merger with Compaq, and in November 2002 Huston's was one. He was 59 and couldn't afford to retire. His 401(k) was weighted heavily with tech stocks that had taken a plunge. So he vowed to try anything. He took the test to become a substitute school teacher, sought work as a security guard and applied for a sales job at a new Home Depot. Home Depot told him he was overqualified.

Four months after his layoff he spotted a small ad for a job programming in the ancient computer language Cobol for a sporting goods chain. It wasn't nearly as challenging as his H-P job and it pays only $60,000 a year. "Emotionally, that was hard to accept," he says. But he counts himself luckier than colleagues who are still pounding the pavement. "For this moment in history, [management] has gone in the direction of complete business decisions. Employees be damned," he says, sighing deeply.

Ravi Trivedi, 29, is one of the workers from India who were summoned to H-P headquarters for training and work. Now he is back working full time for H-P in Bangalore, in a modern gray-and-white building with a fountain in front. If it weren't for the occasional flickering of lights caused by Bangalore's erratic electricity supply, this could be Silicon Valley.

Unlike Michael Huston, Trivedi thinks of his next raise rather than whether he is willing to take a pay cut. After college, he earned a master's degree in computer science at the Bangalore campus of the famed Indian Institute of Science. At his first job, he earned $2,665 a year. Now he earns ten times that as a software analyst. His most recent H-P project was writing Java code that creates B2B yellow pages.

With his pay rising and his job prospects ever brighter, Trivedi, like many IT Indians, is on a spending tear. "You have a lot of freedom and purchasing power," he says. He owns a motorcycle, is saving for a house and has become a bit of a globetrotter. He has worked for H-P in the U.K. and is planning vacations to Malaysia and Thailand. In his time in the U.S. working for H-P, he visited Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Phoenix, Dallas and the Grand Canyon. "I used a lot of frequent-flier miles," he says with a grin.

But only hotshot M.B.A.s and techies earn on Trivedi's scale. A friend with a government job earns half Trivedi's salary and struggles to pay the rent on a small apartment. Though both of his parents are professors at famous universities, Trivedi earns more than their paychecks combined.

More Indians are joining Trivedi's ranks ? and more Americans will be facing Huston's fate. H-P began its offshore operations in India in 1995, and its head count there has rocketed up to 10,000. By cutting costs the company is landing big service contracts, such as one to do data processing for Procter & Gamble, at $3 billion over ten years. Last year, despite the economic slump into which Palo Alto has sunk, H-P increased its revenue 29 percent to $73 billion and reported $2.5 billion in profits after a $900 million loss in 2002.

Back in Bangalore, at the humming offices of Infosys, where Stawan Kadepurkar oversees three Cisco projects, some techies are well aware of an inevitable irony: that American innovation sparked the job flight now hurting America. Back in 1998 Kadepurkar himself was the first Infosys worker to work on-site at Cisco. He wrote programs to allow voice-over-IP, a key Internet-based advance that made overseas phone calls so cheap that corporate America could serve its U.S. customers via call centers and tech labs on the other side of the world.

And now India has to watch its back. With Indian tech salaries on the rise, says Infosys Chief Nilekani, the country must build on its reputation for quality, not just price, to keep the jobs that have flooded in from the U.S. and Europe. Salaries in China are lower than in India, and Chinese companies have sent teams to India to learn how to set up their own offshoring companies to serve Western clients.

Meanwhile, what should workers in America do? Nilekani recommends pursuing careers in specialties that cannot be delivered over a wire. "If someone is a cardiac surgeon, he will not be displaced. But if you are a radiologist, somebody from Bangalore is liable to check X rays." That is cold comfort to a laid-off engineer in Silicon Valley; retraining to become a surgeon would take another nine years.
? 2004 Forbes.com

J.R - Brockport, New York
U.S.A.

Quit whining Stanley. You didn't get ripped off. For God's sake you bought a camera in a vending machine in Times Square. I doubt Eastman Kodak even owns the vending machine. Some person probably owns the vending machine and stocks it with products, just like a candy vending machine. Do you think every time you buy a chocolate bar from a machine that Hershey Corp. is the owner and that they set the price? I think not. Every thing in a vending is jacked up in price from what the going rate is in a regular store. At work, the machine sells candy bars for .65 but I know that if I go to the grocery store they are probably going to be .33-.50 cents. Have I been ripped off. No!! The machines are a convenience with an owner trying to make a profit. If there were other stores so close by, you should have done some comparison shopping. That's your fault. You made the decision. There is no rip off here.