In the last 10 days or so we’ve written about one of our friends who claims to have spent 12 hours on the phone with iiNet seeking help with technology problems, and the article referred to in this post, in which a journalist claims to have spent 10 hours on the phone with Telstra also seeking help with technology problems.
As far as we’re concerned, as soon as we find out that an organisation we’re dealing with expects us to to deal with it on the telephone, especially one as important as the one we’re using to connect us to the internet, we know that the top management of that organisation doesn’t care about how we get on. Because, to start with, how do we prove to them how we got on, how we spent 10 or 12 hours on the phone etc. etc.
To us, the organisations we’re looking for have ordinary email addresses readily available which we can use to send them letters outlining our problems, and then just wait for things to happen. If phone calls are the way to go, they can ring us.
The closest thing we’ve found to this is with Vodafone – we’ve used support@vodafone.com.au a few times, and while a couple of times we’ve got back automated messages saying things like, “Oh dear, you’ve used an email address that isn’t monitored,” on other occasions we’ve got helpful responses reasonably promptly.
Of course everything depends on the competition, but if competition emerges that’s at all like that in our dream world, (and perhaps it already exists – it’s just that not enough people know about it,) organisations like iiNet and Telstra, as they are now, just won’t survive.
Of course nobody and nothing is perfect, but there are people and organisations that are better than others – some MUCH better!