More than 200 call centre jobs threatened

Jul 4 2009 by Iain Laing, The Journal

“We continue to remain an important partner of Orange in broadband care, outbound retentions, collections and campaigns, all of which will be unaffected moving forward.”

The business had been expanding strongly in recent years with the opening of new centres on Teesside, South Tyneside and South Africa.

It says it is still winning new customers and creating jobs, although in January it had to shed 90 posts after telecoms giant Vodafone said it wanted to cut back to save money.

Garlands was founded by Ms Garland in 1987 as a one-woman debt collection agency operating from an attic room in her Middlesbrough home.