Hirees told Apple tech support center not coming here

Apple Inc. apparently was considering Colorado Springs for a technical support center to help customers with their iPhones and iPods, but workers already hired by a third-party company on Apple's behalf say they were abruptly told last week the project was canceled.

It's not clear if Apple, the Cupertino, Calif.,-based tech giant, ever committed to opening the center in the Springs, which would have employed 500 workers initially and 850 total, said one of the would-be workers hired by the third party company. It is also unknown whether recent Apple ads in The Gazette inviting online applications for work-at-home technical customer service representatives were related to the support center.

An Apple spokeswoman declined comment Tuesday; Colorado Springs Economic Development Corp. President Mike Kazmierski said he was unaware of any Apple initiatives in the Springs.

It's also unclear whether New York-based Volt Information Sciences Inc., prematurely recruited and hired workers for Apple before it made a final decision on the Springs center. Volt officials didn't return calls Tuesday; the company is a publicly held, international personnel staffing firm that operates under several names and has offices in the Springs.

What is clear is that some local residents interviewed for jobs with Volt and when hired were told they'd be working for an Apple center here.

Jerry Reynolds, a Springs resident, provided The Gazette with copies of e-mails he said were from local Volt recruiters. The first, dated Sept. 23 and which included "Appleflex Project" in the subject line, told Reynolds the time and date of his training, which was to take place at 2424 Garden of the Gods Road, the site of a Verizon Communications Inc.-owned campus. A Verizon spokeswoman declined comment on whether the building was to be used by Apple.

Reynolds said he received an e-mail Thursday from a second Volt recruiter that explained "the Volt Colorado Springs Call Center project you were hired for has been cancelled. The project was cancelled due to Economic conditions and improved quality of the product resulting in a reduced volume to the Support lines."

A second would-be employee at the center, who asked that his name not be used, provided a Sept. 24 e-mail from another Volt recruiter, which said, in part, that "today, we received notice from Apple that the iPhone Training Class you were hired for has been pushed back from Sep. 29 to Monday, Oct. 13. Unfortunately the site will not be ready until that time."

The second employee received a Thursday e-mail, identical to the one received by Reynolds.

Reynolds said he and his wife, Amanda, were each going to be paid $15 an hour for fielding iPhone customer calls; other employees working with iPod customers would have been paid $13 an hour, he said. The work might have lasted only three to six months and employees might have been trained to work at home, Reynolds said.

"Financially, it kind of really puts us in a bind," said Reynolds, who moved to the Springs three years ago from Ohio. "You're talking $66,000 a year between the two of us. That's a substantial amount of money. Yeah, we're angry about it. There should have been some communication on what was going on."

Reynolds said a Volt recruiter told him the company is now in a bind.

"‘We're trying to recover from this mess and we don't have 500 jobs for these people'," Reynolds said he was told.

Apple previously had a major presence in the Pikes Peak region. In 1991, Apple opened a plant in Fountain, south of the Springs, where it manufactured computer notebooks. The plant was purchased five years later by an electronics manufacturer.

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CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0228 or rich.laden@gazette.com