Two things I’d like to know:

How can Transcript Divas possibly claim to be the cheapest and fastest service in the UK? Where’s the evidence? Incidentally, I personally know that they are neither.

Also, I believe I read somewhere on the site that they have something like 35 transcribers, yet their terms and conditions state “All prices are not subject to VAT.” Surely just another error but if correct then something is very wrong.

This website would immediately put me off. I greatly dislike websites running other companies down, but it rankles even more when they’re factually incorrect. Frankly, I think it just makes Transcript Divas look unprofessional and somewhat deluded.

However, something that casting words has done well is accurate, well-spelloed transcription that only requires a little massaging into decent HTML.

On your website, you have several typos (“whats this” should be “with out time-codes” should be “without time-codes”) which make me think I might have to do a lot of tidying up.

Audio transcription at $1.50 / minute is not cheap especially when a 6 day turnaround. We (transcript divas.co.uk) can currently turn this round in 3 days for £0.90p / audio minute (£0.80p for non-profits).

Although as pointed out the use of Mechanical Turk is an excellent idea – however it predominately pays the people transcribing a few pounds an hour to transcribe – far below minimum wage. An interview from casting words staff details that transcribers are payed $0.19c/audio minute. You do the maths on that one! see http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2006/07/24/turks/index1.html

It does seem strange that a grass roots event such as Geek in the park is so willing to be supported worker exploitation. A quick look at the numbers and you see that casting words is making a bucket load from exploiting people. See here for a industry based transcribers wage scale for comparison. see http://transcriptdivas.co.uk/transcription-jobs/