What we're talking about

Phil of Springwood on "He's a dog..." @Bigfellah, with your permission, I would like to add that I thank you sincerely for acknowledging my success at being a ... more
Bella on Preferential voting FIRST PAST THE POST ~ is not as democratic as you may like to think.In a preferential system every registered voters final ... more
steve on A few facts on illegal boat people Hey Wendy - I'm an immigrant - I've lived here for 40 years and have learned to ignore people with attitudes like yours but ... more
James Weir on A few facts on illegal boat people Wendy, I'm surprised anyone lives in Adelaide. Even the Welsh born redheads are getting out of the place. more
Phil of Springwood on "He's a dog..." @Bigfellah. Again in typical Socialist Fashion, you are denying me my right to form an opinion. Mr. and Mrs. Newton ... more
Meg on "He's a dog..." I believe that any ordinary person who assaults women would have been charged and jailed not sent to rehab. Has Matthew ... more
Wendy on A few facts on illegal boat people Look around..In Adelaide now, you cannot spot an Aussie. Everywhere you look its Chinese/Asians, Indians and Pakistani's. ... more
bigfella on "He's a dog..." Hi z,The point is: How the heck would Phil of Springwood know what sort of parents Bert and Patti were to their son? For all ... more
z on Bob Brown Lazarus Where is the costings that they demand of everyone else, thier 5 minutes of fame will be up shortley more
Shanelle on System failure The whole system is stuffed. I have been apart of it for 10years now and still im confused. Im in a bad place at the moment ... more
James Weir on Barnaby Joyce How many Clem 7's would you like in your Super Fund, Barnaby? It lost $1.5B in it's current reporting period. Only Govts can ... more
Steve Martin on "He's a dog..." Rebecca Wilson as per normal is just plain out of touch.The hitting of women is wrong but personalising this with "he's a ... more
Ronny Of Brighton QLD on Preferential voting MichaelIve just come back from a holiday.That bloke Dean Jaensch Siad that if someone(call Him RONNY) had 40% he said 60% of ... more
z on Preferential voting the way it is working at the moment is the first loser joins with 2nd loser and so on untill they beat the winner, so a ... more
brisman on Bob Brown The guy is not green he absolutley red through to the core. His environmental visions are shallow and don't serve ... more
z on "He's a dog..." bigfella, Phil of Springwood is not talking from so called flippantly expertise, Ivory tower stuff but more from commonsense ... more
robert goodchild on Support our Diggers the sticker Idea is great.I would happily part with $20 for one and would like to see the profit go to families who have ... more
Phil of Springwood on "He's a dog..." Hey Bigfella, back again so soon after your mobs magnificent defeat by the Tories, I thought you and the rest of your Left ... more
z on "He's a dog..." Hey Phil, why don't you say what you really mean more
bigfella on "He's a dog..." Congratulations to Phil of Springwood,We've become accustomed to his astute political and social commentaries based on ... more

The Phone Companies

Posted by: Michael Smith | 24 November, 2008 - 11:50 AM

Most Australians are pretty easy going. It takes a fair bit for most of us to go to the trouble of lodging a complaint about poor service. When was the last time you sent a restaurant meal back?

When you have a problem with a phone company the process to get it solved is pretty time-consuming. First you've got to go to the phone company, go through their process to get the problem solved. If you go through those hoops and you're still not happy, then you can go to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman to try to get their help. That should be the last resort.

So it's jaw-dropping that 150,000 people lodged an official complaint with the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman about our phone companies last year. 150,000 people complaining about 268,645 individual customer complaints that the phone companies hadn't fixed.

This industry seems to think it's a law unto itself. And of course with 90% of the $40 billion a year industry's profits, Telstra is the main offender.

One of the blokes I work with, Kevin Turner, has just come back from New Zealand. He took his Telstra wireless broadband connection with him. It worked OK in New Zealand and he used it to download 678 megabytes of data (maybe one or two reasonable sized photos). He "roamed" onto a phone company in New Zealand. That phone company would have charged Telstra no more than it charged a New Zealand local - maybe $10 or $20 absolute tops. But the bill Kevin got from Telstra - $10,000. What a rip-off. Just pure, gouging profit for the monster gorilla Telstra.

Or this. The husband of the Consumer Telecommunications Network CEO bought a mobile phone from Telstra. It was faulty. He returned it to the dealer. Six weeks later the dealer denied it had the phone. Then admitted they'd lost it. Then they tried to sell him a new phone with a new contract, while still charging him under the old contract. After the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman stepped in Telstra promised a new handset. But the customer was billed for it anyway. Which sent him back into the same circle of complaints and no resolution. Months later Telstra found the original faulty phone.

The notion of customer service in the phone companies is a joke. Why do they bother with computer voice systems that say "your call is important to us, please select from the following option." It's total BS. Your call is not important to them unless you're going to buy something. It would be more honest to say "your call is a dead-set pain in the butt to us so we're going to make it so frustrating that hopefully you'll go away."

When the industry is so manifestly not up to fixing its own problems, there has to be a real role for the government to step in and regulate with serious fines for non-compliance.