Card firm cancels deal after outsourcing firm offers customers unauthorized terms of credit.

Credit card company Capital One Financial Corp. canceled a telemarketing contract with Indian outsourcing company Wipro Spectramind after its customers were misled with unauthorized offers for credit, a newspaper reported Thursday.

The contract with New Delhi-based Wipro was canceled after Capital One was informed that the Indian company’s employees had made offers to customers that they hadn’t been authorized to make, the Financial Times said.

Capital One (COF: up $0.43 to $71.92, Research, Estimates) spokeswoman Tatiana Stead confirmed by e-mail that it stopped all calls through a telemarketing vendor after it confirmed that certain activities “were not in line with our company’s standards.”

Stead did not immediately return messages or calls seeking confirmation of other information reported by the Financial Times.

The offers made by Wipro employees included extending the terms of special deals beyond their expiration date and inflating credit terms available to customers, according to the paper.

Wipro, India’s largest call center which first uncovered the activity in January, has dismissed roughly 30 employees involved the telemarketing campaign, the newspaper said. Roughly 600 Wipro staff had worked on the Capital One account, one of its largest, the newspaper reported.

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http://money.cnn.com/2004/03/25/news/international/capital_one.reut/index.htm