Telstra's cable TV service shows typical disregard for customers

Why could they not have done this in the early hours of the morning?

FOXTEL customers were left wondering who was the Biggest Loser after the pay-TV operator forced an upgrade of their set-top boxes. The upgrade, which began shortly after 9.12pm yesterday, caused units across the country to shutdown for up to 30 minutes.

The timing coincided with the final episode of Network Ten's reality show The Biggest Loser, which was one of the most watched shows this year. About 1.88 million Australians watched university student Sam Rouen take the title, however, those watching it on Foxtel were left with a blank screen.

The upgrade also affected customers who had scheduled recording programs last night, with many finding their unit displaying a 'failed' message in place of their favourite show. Foxtel has not yet responded to a request for comment.

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The latest Telstra bungle



Just hours after Telstra switched off its CDMA network, farmers, bushfolk and residents of regional Australia are eager to determine whether the Next G network is equal or better than the old service.

Telstra already has heralded the conversion as a success but Don Jackson says many of his neighbours in Osborne St, Scarborough, would disagree. Mr Jackson lives just a few minutes from Redcliffe City, but still needs an expensive external aerial to make a call on his Next G-compatible mobile from the comfort of his lounge. "Scarborough is not exactly an Outback suburb," Mr Jackson, 76, said. "If it's not going to work in the middle of civilisation, I can't see how it's going to work in the back blocks."

Mr Jackson said he bought his Next G-compatible mobile phone a few months ago in anticipation of the changeover. While he conceded the problem existed since he bought his mobile, he said the Next G network was not equal or better to CDMA, as promised by the Rudd Government. He said a Telstra employee showed him a map, indicating he could get reception from his street. He said his partner could get reception from her Optus phone in and outside their home. But because he couldn't, he had to cough up about $200 for an external aerial. He said that if he stood in the middle of his street he could sometimes get reception without the aerial. "Once you get past Oxley Ave, you lose it," he said.

The Courier-Mail rang Telstra on behalf of Mr Jackson and was told his story was "strange" because it would know if there was a blackspot in Osborne St. The spokeswoman said Telstra would send someone out.

About 550km northwest of Scarborough, at Banana, Tim Larsen remains sceptical of the Next G network, although he admitted he had no problem with it yesterday. Mr Larsen, 38, said he was angry at what the change had cost him. His car needs a special kit which has to be installed by a professional. All up, he faces up to $700 in costs. "What's annoying is the cost of the outlay . . . was made by someone else for me," he said.

It's the same sentiment for Mark Driscoll, a cattle farmer on a property about 100km from Moura. "Frustrated, you've got no idea," Mr Driscoll said. "I've never spent as much time on an issue as Telstra in the last three-to-four months." He said he had rang Telstra about 17 times without success to find out how the new service would affect him.

Queensland Senator Barnaby Joyce said 25 per cent of the service was not equivalent or better. And Nationals stalwart Ron Boswell said many telco providers, including Optus and Pivotel Globstar, which piggybacked on the CDMA network, were shut out of the market, leaving only Telstra with the infrastructure to service customers.

Telstra said the switch-off at midnight on Monday went to plan without incident. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, who approved the transition this month, said Telstra would be forced to reveal its drop-out rates.

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If only Australians were as feisty as Americans

America's Comcast cable company seems to be on a par with Telstra for bad service and arrogance. But some Americans push back. Some excerpts:

Inspired by March Madness, the folks at the Consumerist blog recently set up brackets to determine America’s worst company. The tournament was still going on as this column went to press, but I’m not afraid to predict the winner. It will be Comcast — in a rout.

Sure, you skeptics are thinking, “What about Wal-Mart? Exxon? Halliburton?” I’ll admit that we can’t (yet) connect Comcast to child labor, environmental destruction or Dick Cheney (although clearly you’ve never sat for seven hours on a Saturday waiting for a new DVR). But I’m not alone in my seething rage for the nation’s largest cable company.

The Internet is filled with sites — like ComcastMustDie.com, ComCraptic.com and ComcastSucks.org — dedicated to the company. Comcast customer Brian Finkelstein’s video of one of its technicians sleeping on his couch has been watched more than 1 million times on YouTube.

Then there’s Mona Shaw. This once mild-mannered retired nurse from northern Virginia (a square-dancing Unitarian, no less) got so fed up with Comcast’s lousy customer service that she went down to the local office armed with a claw hammer. Here’s the play-by-by from a Washington Post profile of Shaw:

Shaw storms in the company’s office. BAM! She whacks the keyboard of the customer service rep. BAM! Down goes the monitor. BAM! She totals the telephone. People scatter, scream, cops show up and what does she do? POW! A parting shot to the phone!

Shaw was arrested and earned a $345 fine, along with the admiration of millions.

More here

Merry-go-round of telecom customers proves costly

Whatever it costs the moronic b***s is still not enough in my opinion. That they tolerate the huge turnover rate described below shows what morons they are

CUSTOMER churn costs local businesses $1.5 billion a year, with telecommunications companies the biggest losers. A poll of more than 600 Australian consumers found that over the past 12 months, telephone, mobile phone and broadband companies suffered the most from customer turnover, ahead of electricity providers, banks and insurance firms. Seventy-nine per cent of respondents singled out pricing as the main factor for leaving a company, followed by a lack of incentives to stay loyal (48 per cent).


Poor customer service continued to be the bane of many consumers, with 42 per cent saying their suppliers could not adequately solve their problems, while 20 per cent had issues with inexperienced staff manning their calls.


The survey, commissioned by IT vendor BMC Software, said six out of 10 consumers had changed a supplier in the past year. "This switching merry-go-round is costing Australian business approximately $1.58 billion per annum when the cost of a single customer is multiplied by the average number of churns per year and the adult population (13.2 million)," the survey said. "Furthermore, when the impact of negative word of mouth is taken into account, these costs will rise still further to a conservative estimate of $2.376 billion."

The results do not surprise marketing expert Adrian Payne, a professor of marketing at the University of NSW. Dr Payne said telephone companies had a great deal of difficulty in becoming the "corner-shop corporation". "How can you look, think and feel like a corner shop when you have tens of thousands of customers? This is what they're grappling with," he said.

Organisations with high churn rates should conduct a "defection analysis" to determine the root cause of the loss, rather than ramp up advertising. "It's the leaking bucket syndrome," Dr Payne said. "If they can't do anything about it, they pump money into customer acquisition and there are many problems related to this approach when you don't know why you're losing those customers in the first place."

The study, conducted by Ciao Research, surveyed participants between the ages of 18 and 64 with a yearly income of below $30,000 to over $130,000.

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THE TIO REPLY

In response to my email of 27 March, I got the following reply from the TIO. Below the reply I reproduce my reply to the reply

From: "TIO Investigations Team" response@tio.com.au

Subject: TIO ref: 08/061042


Dear Dr Ray,

Thank you for your email received by the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) on 28 March 2008. I am responding to you on the Ombudsman's behalf, in accordance with my responsibilities as Enquiry Manager.

The TIO did receive your letter dated 21 December 2007, however it was mistakenly assumed to be related to your previous Optus complaint. The letter was added to your file, but no further action was taken due to this oversight. I sincerely apologise for any inconvenience this has caused.

The person who was handling your file has since left the TIO and therefore, the matter was passed on to Lou to action. It is my understanding that you believe Lou has misunderstood the issues of your complaint. I have had an opportunity to read the case notes left by Lou and see no evidence that this was the case. Lou has advised that she contacted you to clarify whether this was a different complaint to that originally lodged on 14 December 2007. Lou is an experienced Enquiry
Officer and while I have no doubt that she was attempting to assist you with your complaint, I do apologise if there was any confusion.

The TIO has since received a letter from the Honourable Kevin Rudd, MP on your behalf. I will be responding to your complaint directly via Mr Rudd's office as requested.

In closing, I regret that you feel that the handling of your complaint was less than satisfactory, however, I trust that this has addressed your concerns and a response to your recent correspondence will be forwarded via Mr Rudd's office.

Yours Sincerely

Tanya Erdos, Enquiry Manager

I replied:

Good to hear from you.

I am still amazed that it took three letters -- all of which were (as I expected) in fact received by the TIO -- to get a response out of the TIO. You've definitely got some dumb bunnies working there. And Lou certainly did everything to reinforce that impression. Please consider using an IQ test to weed out the incompetents.

Telstra have now told me that they will accede to my request

The Amazing Telstra again

At last it happened! I got to talk to someone at Telstra about my complaint! I have been trying to get my complaint attended to since 24 November, 2007! And I have written many letters about the matter since then.

It was pressure from the TIO that got them to respond. I received a call from a Matthew at Telstra Customer Relations. After a very brief conversation he agreed to my request that Telstra refund the money that they had originally confiscated from my Telstra prepaid mobile phone account. Why could that conversation not have happened months ago? Search me! Anyway, it will be interesting to see whether or not the refunded money DOES turn up in my account.

There is an annoying coda to the matter, however. Just after I had finished speaking to Matthew, it occurred to me that I would like written confirmation of what he had done in response to my complaint. So I tried to ring him back. "Oh Oh!" you will no doubt be saying if you know anything about Telstra. And you would be right.

Matthew had given me a number to call him back: 1800 814 242 plus a reference number for my matter: 1-131690332. So I was not being a total optimist in trying to call him back. But the number turned out to be a general Telstra enquiry number. "OK", you might say. "How does it matter what number you use as long as you get in touch?"

But you don't know Telstra enquiry numbers if you ask that. The message I got when I called was (approximately): "We are at present experiencing a higher volume of calls than usual so you may have to wait some time. If you wait you will be answered in turn. Otherwise please hang up and call back later". I have heard that message so often that I should be able to say it off by heart.

If they are CONSTANTLY experiencing a "too high" volume of calls, don't you think that they could put on more staff so that the delays don't happen? Not Telstra! Anyway, I wasn't prepared to waste part of my day waiting online for these arrogant ignoramuses so I did not manage to place my return call. I will just await developments.

Email to Katrina Hicks, Constituent Officer for Kevin Rudd

Dear Katrina

Thank you for your efforts on my behalf in stirring the TIO into life.

I finally got a call from someone there yesterday afternoon. But it was a shambles.

They obviously have no respect for your office. They gave the matter over to a young woman ("Lou") who seemed to have a mental age of about 11 and I doubt that she knew or understood anything about my matter.

My complaint was of course about a Telstra mobile phone account but she revealed at one stage that she thought the matter concerned a landline account!

I asked her to hand my matter over to a more senior person but I doubt that she will do that without a nudge. If you have a direct line to the Ombudsman himself, I would be obliged if you would second my request for the matter to be reassigned

Many thanks

(Dr) John Ray

Email to the TIO of 27 March, 2008

Dear Ombudsman

You seem to have severe staffing issues at the moment.

I sent you a complaint about my Telstra prepaid mobile account on Dec 21, 2007 which received no response

I sent you another copy over a month ago

It got no response

So I wrote to Kevin Rudd

Your staff told Rudd's office that you had received NEITHER of my letters so Rudd's office forwarded you a third copy a day or two ago

Late this afternoon I got a call from a young woman named Lou at your office.

She was so out of the loop that she thought my complaint concerned a landline account.

Is that the standard you expect from your staff?

The woman concerned seemed so densely thick that I must ask you to hand over my matter to a more senior person.

The reference Lou gave me was 08061042

Thanking you
John Ray

Letter of 15 March, 2008 from Kevin Rudd's office

Our ref: klh:klh/

Dear Dr Ray

Thank you for contacting Kevin with your concerns regarding Telstra pre paid mobile accounts. Kevin has now asked that I make enquiries on your behalf in relation to this matter. Please be assured that I am investigating this matter and will provide you with a detailed response at the earliest opportunity. In the meantime, if you wish to discuss this matter further, or if there are any other Federal Government matters with which Kevin may be of assistance to you, please do not hesitate to contact the Electorate Office on 3899 4031.

Yours sincerely
Katrina Hicks

Letter of 9 March, 2008

TO:
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd

Dear Mr Rudd,

I have noticed that you have had problems with Telstra. So have I.

Are you aware that if you do not use money in a prepaid mobile phone account within a narrow timeframe, Telstra just confiscate the unused money and refuse to give it back? They did that to me and did it without any notice. One day I just found that my mobile was no longer working even though I had spent only about half the money in the account.

I wrote to Telstra about it but they declined to do anything about it.

I have written to the TIO twice about it but they have just ignored me.

I think legislation may be needed to stop Telstra from continuing this unfair practice.

I enclose a copy of the letter that the TIO ignored twice. I sent the second copy over a month ago but have not even had the courtesy of an acknowledgement.

Yours faithfully,

(Dr) John Ray

Telstra contemptuous of country Australians

Susan Carlson writes

Not all customers are treated the same! I have been using the net since 1996. During this time I was using a locally based ISP. Why? Because they were reasonably priced, offered service and I very rarely had trouble getting on line!

While I may have changed my towers, hard wear, soft wear and desks, I have always used the same ISP. I like my ISP, because time after time I heard my friends say how hard it is to get on line. Most of them are with Bigpond, or as I like to call it, Big Puddle!

This year I decided to upgrade my net access to broadband. Not because of the large downloads, although that is very attractive for my photographic service, but because my Mum is 86 and hates it when she can’t get through to me. So broadband seems the perfect answer.

Of course that’s perfect for me but not for Telstra. I’m not ‘with them’. And I don’t want to change! So when I asked my ISP about getting broadband, they advised me that I would be paying a fee to Telstra, an increased monthly fee and also buying a new modem. That’s fair enough and so I paid them. I trust them because I’ve done business with them for 12 years!

So why has Telstra knocked back my first application? I don’t owe them money and always pay my phone bill on time? Why did my ISP have to present my application again and why two months later are Telstra still ‘looking into my accessibility’!

Makes you wonder why a friend of mine (in the same phone area) has had broadband for the last few months? OH she’s not only a Telstra customer; she has her email with them!

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More Telstra arrogance

FOUR loyal Telstra customers are considering legal action after the giant telco stripped them of their profitable business phone number and handed it to a competitor just two doors away. The move plunged the Capalaba Raine & Horne real estate business into turmoil with its four owners claiming $312,000 in lost business. It had the "established real estate number" for only six weeks, after a transfer of business from the now liquidated Kanga Cove. "And to think Telstra gave that number – which was well established in the community – to LJ Hooker down the road really rubs salt into the wound," co-owner Margaret Enbom said yesterday.

Although technically a phone number cannot be bought, it is common for it to be transferred with the sale of a business. The value of an established business phone number, particularly in real estate, may surprise those unaccustomed to the phone-reliant industry. "In real estate it's paramount to the value of street position and taking it from a business is tantamount to identity theft," said private accountant Surome Singh, who consulted with the industry before costing the losses for the owners.

Mr Singh said the matter had dragged on since 2004, with Telstra in 2006 offering $50,000 in compensation for "poor delivery of service". Last month, Telstra downgraded its offer to just $5000. Mr Singh said that in May 2007 he calculated a fair settlement of $256,345, which had risen since to about $312,000.

Telstra yesterday denied it had even suspended the number, despite a previous verbal admission it suspended the service because it associated Raine & Horne (incorrectly) with Kanga Cove's incapacity to pay its telephone bills. "Telstra maintain the number was terminated by the administrator when the former business went bankrupt," a spokesman said. "The number was then made available and reissued."

Ms Enbom said her business enjoyed fair trade until the phones were cut, without warning, and then plunged into silent turmoil with the goodwill provided by the established number lost. She derided Telstra for its latest offer and questioned how many other businesses had suffered the same fate.

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Arrogant Telstra loses one

May there be many more like this

TELSTRA'S ownership of the network of copper wires that makes up Australia's fixed-line telephone system has been legally diminished after the High Court unanimously rejected a case by the telco that its constitutional property rights were breached by being forced to allow rivals access to its infrastructure.

Yesterday's ruling found that the former government-owned monopoly's ownership of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) was contingent on the telco providing rivals with access. "Telstra's bundle of rights in respect of the PSTN has always been subject to the rights of its competitors to require access to and use of the assets," the judgment said.

The ruling, which pundits described as Telstra's "own goal", affirms the telecommunications access regime of the Trade Practices Act and bolsters the power of the federal Government before the tender process for the $4.7billion national broadband bid.

Telstra brought the case in January last year, asking the High Court to consider whether its constitutional rights under Section 51 (XXI), that the federal government can only compulsorily acquire "property" on "just terms", were being breached by 11 of its rivals, the commonwealth and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which sets prices for compulsory third-party access to Telstra's network. Telstra argues the access prices set by the ACCC for its opponents are below cost and thus not acquired on just terms. But the judges challenged the scope of Telstra's "property".

"Telstra's argument that there is an acquisition of its property otherwise than on just terms is ... synthetic and unreal because it proceeds from an unstated premise that Telstra has larger and more ample rights in respect of the PSTN than it has," they said. "Telstra's 'bundle of rights' in respect of the assets of the PSTN has never been of the nature and amplitude which its present argument assumes."

Telstra general counsel Will Irving said the case had cost Telstra's shareholders "less than $1 million" but had been worth it.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy backed the decision, which "upheld the validity of the telecommunications access regime in the Trade Practices Act". ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel welcomed it, saying that enforcing the access regime did not amount to acquisition of Telstra's property. The other winners are the G9 group of smaller telcos such as Optus, Primus and Macquarie Telecoms.

Optus's Andrew Sheridan said the judgment sent a "clear message to Telstra that it cannot ride roughshod over the will of parliament". Macquarie Telecom's Matt Healy said Telstra had been "given a harsh history lesson" by the judges, while Primus Telecom CEO Ravi Bhatia said it was "well past time for Telstra to stop wasting money and management bandwidth on misguided and speculative litigation in attempts to crush competition and subvert the law of the land".

Despite the unanimous ruling against Telstra, David Forman, from the Competitive Carriers Coalition, said the industry suspected the telco would continue to launch "serial court actions with little or no merit". "Until Telstra is separated into independent wholesale and retail businesses, it will continue to do everything it can to make it difficult for any other retail telecommunications company to do business," he said. "Telstra has still not won a single case on substantial matters since its management arrived from America in 2005 and imported the litigate-everything strategy, winning only one minor administrative law case against the ACCC."

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You just CANNOT win with Telstra!

They are pigs, apes and monkeys -- or that is the standard of their service.

The first time I learnt that my mobile service had been cut off was when I had arrived at a gated complex and needed to phone the person inside to say that I had arrived. All I got from my phone was a message to say that my service had been "suspended" -- even though I still had plenty of money in my prepaid account. I ended up having to climb over a high fence that night in order to get to my destinmation -- which was not remotely amusing for an old guy like me.

If Telstra were a civilized organization, one might have expected that they would send out (say) a text message advising the customer of a service suspension as soon as the suspension occurred -- but expecting civility of Telstra is pissing into the wind, of course

And it happened again last night. I was delayed in hospital and wanted to advise the person who was to pick me up of that. But all I got was a message saying: "Emergency calls only"! The phone was working again this morning so I rang Telstra to enquire what the hell was going on and was told that they had "routing issues" last night. I have been using phones for around 50 years and had never heard that one before. Service standards have definitely got worse.

Telstra need to recognize that their customers RELY on their phones for many things and build in enough system redundancy to avoid such service failures. I now have my own form of systems redundancy. I have another cellphone from Optus that I can use whenever Telstra let me down. Disgraceful that anybody has to go to such expense, however.