I used to be a Vodafone mobile customer until one day Vodafone disconnected me because they alleged that I owed them $9. How would I know? I receive a bill… I pay a bill… I receive a bill… I pay a bill. One day Vodafone decided that some of the roaming charges from my European trip had to be paid immediately. Did they send me a bill? No? So how can I pay the bill? The stupid company disconnected me after years of loyalty. No warning, no bill, no phone call, no text, no clue. How pathetic. I was on a $79 plan, with some bills reaching $600. I was using my own phone! A SIM card at $79 per month, yet often paying $400 to $600 is pretty profitable. Anyway, I protested and joined TGP. What a mistake to make!

From the word go, I had issues with TPG. One of which was TPG’s insistence that it keeps $100 of my money in its kitty as a roaming deposit. The silly duffers had my credit card and auto debit authorisation. Anyway, if they can keep $100 from each customer, wow, what a fantastic banking system they must operate. On mobile clients alone, that could amount to $21,000,000 in cash. My cash and yours! And I thought they were a telecommunications company. Alas, they are in a different business altogether. (Not counting the $20 SIM deposit they take. Another few million of funding. No wonder the company managed to reduce its debts last year by $93 million.)

Anyway, I joined TPG on a SIM-only $79 plan and exceeded that too, adding to their coffers (of the 25 bills, 14 of them were over $79, reaching $322 in one instance). But I only exceeded it due to roaming. Locally, a $79 plan for SIM-only was mega-profitable for them, considering that I had never downloaded a video, let alone a photo. No web surfing. Just the baby stuff averaging 8 kb of data, and not much of it. I was on an ‘unlimited’ plan, yet hardly spent a few cents on data and made few calls. Good luck to them. My fault for over-spending. But I will not tolerate their ghastly non-delivery that impacts my life.

THE NAUGHTY BITS

So, what has TPG done to cause me to move away? (I cancelled my account seven days ago.) They do not so much as have a smidgen of customer-service in their blood. Not a smear. Out of the blue, one day, after two years and two months, I was unable to check my emails. Just like that. No explanation. So I called, and waited and waited and waited, (the waiting time was in fact long enough for me to write ‘and waited’ 840 times…) And in the end, the operator told me that I had to re-ID myself or log-in and re-activate the service. No thanks. You have already ID-ed me for this call, so please just fix it. She hung up on me. (I did not want to be identified again, because I had people around me. I did not want everyone to hear me divulging my name, date of birth, shoe size…)

I called back and asked to be put through to a supervisor. I waited and waited 900 times before I could explain the situation. ‘Oh sorry she says,’ and she hung up on me. This was a second person with that filthy habit. Another rotten git in a dirty rotten company. (The real reason for my vitriol will be made apparent below, and you, too, will call TPG a dirty rotten company, just you wait…)

So I went on-line to find the company number. ‘Who is your CEO?’ I asked. ‘Sorry, can’t tell you.’ So I filled in the ‘feedback’ form and the ‘customer contact form’ plus I sent a letter to ‘The CEO’ by post (name unknown) asking to be contacted.

Later, I called the head-office (after much searching because the WhitePages only lists the 13 number. Thanks a lot!). ’Oh no, we can’t connect you to god…’ was the style of response. Ok, how about his PA? ‘No, but I can take a message for her.’ Ok, do that! Her name? ‘Crystal.’ Cool. Never heard back. By the way, Crystal, please return your calls, I am still waiting… too late now.

A few days later, I get back on the phone, determined to speak with a supervisor (I need my phone to work. Is that too much to ask?). I have nothing better to do. I have all day. I waited and waited 800 times until a woman escalated the call to someone with an American accent, and she put me on hold… Bloody hell, why does it take fifteen bloody minutes to answer a simple froggy question? ‘What is the name of your CEO?’ After waiting and waiting, I asked the question, and from asking the question, ready, set, go… how long did it take? Another fourteen flipping minutes! Hello, what is your CEO’s name… fifteen minutes. What kind of a flap was going-on while the intelligence officers scrambled to attend to that alien question? And after all this time, the answer was, ‘I will send you an email when I find out’. Talk about R.O.T.P.G (Reeling On The Phone Gasping). How can a company that takes my money (auto monthly debits, mind you) be so docile? They talk about Soul at TPG. Rubbish. Before you have Soul, you need to have a pulse.

During this palaver (and not yet receiving the promised email), and in response to one of my other previous contact methods, an email arrived, refusing to answer my question, and telling me to contact the Customer Service Manager, being Ms Michelle Palaci. So I phoned Michelle, but her voice-mail was on, so I left a voice-message. Not a sausage. No response at all. I sent her an email and copied the first party, and not a breath from either. And they are in the telecommunications business? They ignored me completely.

Anyway, in comes that anticipated email from the accented employee who needed fifteen minutes to work out how to answer my question, returning with a promise to send me an email. Her email gave me the contact details for Michelle. Hang on a minute. She is not the CEO. So I wrote in protest. Who is your CEO? And the woman wrote back, saying [grammatical errors retained for authenticity], ‘During our conversation, you ask for a contact detail of the CEO and I provided you with her email address.’ Poppycock. Michelle is not the CEO. What tripe.

If you recall, I had sent a hand-written card to ‘The CEO’ which should have arrived by now, and still, no response. Why is everyone up in arms about a customer asking for the CEO’s name? How pathetic.

CALLING ALL STATIONS

I put my serious hat on, and found the name and home address of every director of TPG, and so I wrote to David Sangh Teoh (who is a director of 24 companies), and Joseph Cho Pang, and Alan John Latimer, and Robert Dobson Millner (who is a director of 37 companies), and Denis Ledbury. Did any of them respond? Not a saveloy. They think they know about corporate governance? They sit on a board thinking that their objective is to protect investor’s money (they said so in their documentation: ‘The Board’s primary role is the protection and enhancement of long-term shareholder value.’)? Wrong, dear directors. That is not your job. Go back to director school, or call me for a free consultation.

Not one of the directors heeded my request that they ask the CEO to contact me. But what did happen, was that I received a voice-message from Michelle, me ol’ mate after two weeks of the cold shoulder. Wow, she does exist. But is she the CEO? No. Her voice-mail to me said that said she would write to me, but nothing came, so I phoned her, left two messages and finally this email from Michelle:

Dear Nadar [she means Nader, but no matter]

I apologise, I was unexpectedly out of the office yesterday.

I understand your original contact with our call centre was regarding your GPRS capabilities changing on your Mobile service without your knowledge. I have spoken with our Development team & unfortunately a large number of clients had their access barred in error. We were reacting to a reported error from our carrier. I apologise for the inconvenience this caused.

I have also reminded staff of our escalation process. We do have staff available to assist you at every level. You can appreciate the CEO of any company is not available to speak to all clients individually, which is why I am available as a final Escalation point for our Retail arm.

If you have any further queries or feedback I would be happy to discuss this with you.

Here was my furious response:

Hello Ms Palaci [Notes in brackets were added later for this article.]

I completely disagree with your response, and with your company’s policy.

I shall not burden you with my reaction right now, suffice to say that I will now be looking for another carrier and will in due course be cancelling my account with you, and will call your centre to do so. [By close of business that same day, I had signed-up with a competitor.]

If you now have finally understood one of my many points, that being that the GPRS is not working, why is it that to this very minute, it is still not working? Why has it not been rectified? What has anyone done to fix the problem? I have been put to great inconvenience during the last two weeks while I am unable to use this service that your records would show I often use dozens of times per day.

Second, the escalation process does not work, either way. Prior to insisting upon speaking with your CEO, I had left a voice-message for you approximately two weeks ago, and you never returned my call. I sent you an email and you never responded.

I wanted to speak with your CEO because I wanted to understand the essence of your company. Years ago, the most frustrating thing that Telecom/Telstra used to do, was to hang-up on clients. When Optus came into play, I was jumping for joy, and I must have been Optus’ first customer, signing-up with delight.

Two weeks ago, your staff hung up on me. This is horrid and disgraceful. Two of them did this, after keeping me waiting a very long time the first time, and 14 minutes the second time. I called again, and again, and again, and no one knew the name of your CEO.

At first, I did not want to speak with the CEO. I merely wanted to send a letter to the CEO. No-one could tell me the name. How appalling.

I phoned your North Ryde head-office and left a message with a Crystal/Krystal whom I was told was the CEO’s EA/PA, but she never returned my call.

Your voice-mail is always on.

At first your staff did not know the name of the CEO, then they started lying saying that you are the CEO, and defending their lie, until I investigated the matter and found out the names of all your Directors and the CEO/Chair, and I wrote to each of them to their home address [David Teoh’s went to the office], waiting to see which of them will have the commercial decency to contact me or ask a person to contact me. Is this why you contacted me after all this time [two weeks!]?

I was told that I could go on-line and click a button and re-activate the GPRS. I had a look on-line, and your logs will show you that I had logged in. However, the only way to turn-on the GPRS was to sign a new contract. Is this a ploy by your company to force people to sign/agree to new terms that a seasoned lawyer would find difficult to comprehend? Are you blaming a third party for an ultimate sneaky tactic that kicks everyone off, and then by coming back on, they have to agree to new terms that are well outside the original contract? That would be the dirty rotten tactic of the year!

So, the whole affair is completely outside the realm of decency, and I shall make it my business to reach your CEO one way or another, given that no-one is able to push him forward, or he is not interested enough in the business to step-up to the mark. [I suspect they have strange titles like General Manager: one such manager is on a $500,000 salary package (plus share options galore). The Chairman is acting as the CEO which, in my books, is a 100% gold-plated no-no. Another folly is that the company has five directors, two of whom are independent. This rings alarm bells. Completely unacceptable in my view. Mark my words.]

Please turn on my GPRS immediately while I go about my business and find a new carrier. And by the way, I have always said that no-one loses a customer to a competitor. Rather, companies kick customers away. It was a previous kick from Vodafone that kicked me to you. And now you have done another company a favour. And you and your phantom CEO can report to the board that it was the global financial crisis. I believe it was a crisis of another kind.

Jonar Nader

THE BIG DEAL

Anyway my dear reader, the reason for this fury is this: Michelle Palaci says that she is the ‘final Escalation point’. How bloody rude. Second, she admits that a ‘large number of clients had their access barred in error’. If TPG had known this, why did it not rectify the mistake? Why wait for a ‘large number of clients’ to waste their life to call you? Just go in and click the button. It took two weeks and dozens of hours of my life for TPG to re-connect me. Is this innovation? It is my belief that this was a lie. No such error. It was a plot and a ploy to make me agree to the following new terms which are as follows:

I suspect that TPG disconnected its customers on purpose, so that they would be forced to change the contract to this casino-style price-list which charges $5 per megabyte. Who needs money to grow on trees when you can charge like this! There were other terms and conditions to which I would have been forced to accept. Not on your nelly! Even if these were identical to any original terms, I do not wish to enter into a new agreement without my lawyers, who would need $1500 just to read this junk.

COWARDS EVERYWHERE

I have often said  that any company that makes it difficult for a customer to reach it, ought to close down. We, the people, have power, but rarely use it. We must protest more often. I am no longer a TPG customer. By 5:00 pm that afternoon of the email from Michelle, I had signed-up with a new carrier. Recently, I told American Express where to go, after 20 years of misplaced loyalty on my part. I terminated a 22-year relationship with St George Bank on a matter of principle. The list is long. Churning is exhausting. But I just cannot sleep with the enemy.

If you want to check if your company is not a dirty rotten scoundrel, go to your website and inspect the ‘Contact us’ section and see how easy it is to send a request, and how quickly you receive a reply. I left two messages per day, plus an email, for five days for someone at Optus (who gave me his direct line), and he still has not returned my call in relation to a sale! Virgin Mobile is happy to sell plans, but none of us can call them. They have to call us. And when they promise to do so, they do not.

Call your company and ask, ‘Can you please tell me the name of the CEO’. If the answer is not forthcoming immediately, you have a problem. After Telstra overcharged me $1400 for two modems, I called and asked for the name of the Broadband Manager. The operator said, ‘Sorry, we can’t give out that kind of information.’

If you are a CEO, write a letter of complaint to yourself and see if the letter ever reaches you. Every company must have a special email address called CEO@NOT_Your_Company.com and this means that the email is NOT part of your server, which means that no-one within your conglomerate can access it, except for you and your trusted EA who comprehends the brand-promise. Similarly, you need a PO Box whose key is only kept with you or your EA. Customers and the public need to know that they have one point of access to cut through the idiots who destroy the company. Mind you, why would the big-cheese not know what’s going on? Just call your 13 numbers and see how long you have to wait before you are answered. This ought to give you the first clue that you are taking perfect money from people, and delivering a shoddy service. How can you expect to prosper when you have no concept of delivering on your promise? Incidentally, what is the TPG promise? I read everything I could get my hands on, and it’s all about shares, share options, shareholders, and executives, with a peppering of the words ‘large’, ‘largest’, and ‘innovation’, with nary an idea of what it means to be passionate about an industry. OneTel is ringing in my ears!

Way back in December 2008, I had another reason to write to TPG’s CEO. Back then, their Indian call-centre chappy would not give me the name of the CEO. Back then, I wrote to complain about the unethical nature of holding on to $100 of my money ‘in case I roam’. I wrote:

It really is not good to take people’s money and just park it there. Will it be in a trust fund? If your company folds, will the liquidators see that it is my money? The whole practice is flawed.

Anyway, I am new to TPG. I hope that our relationship will be a long one. I noticed that your phone system can be improved. You try calling 1300 360 855 (option 2, 3) and see how long it takes. We do not have such time to waste. Life just slips away while we wait for companies to do their job. I had called that number, and after a long wait, the line was answered and it was disconnected instantly. Someone is playing games.

I doubt this note will reach the MD or CEO. Why should it?

A CEO should have an email address like the rest of the human race!

[If you would like a PDF of the TPG Annual Report for 2009, please click here to download it. A copy of the 2009 AGM presentation by Executive Chairman Mr David Teoh, can be downloaded here.]

THE FINAL STRAW

This morning, I received an email from my friend Laura, who wrote, ‘I am trying to get a resonable outcome at present with my internet service provider TPG. I suffered with a poor internet connenction for 12 months and have demanded they rectify to the fault. I have been on-hold now for 30 minutes.’ Laura did not know that I had any history with TPG. She motivated me to post this article.

If you are a CEO whose company keeps people on hold, please read the following, word for word, in one long stint, so that you can truly appreciate what 30 minutes ‘on hold’ feels like. Then tell me if heads should roll, as you…

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P.S. I had sent this article to my friend Laura, and the funniest response came the next day because her internet connection at home does not work, due to issues with TPG, despite all that holding and waiting. Her email read, ‘Thank you for sending this over. I am reading it now at an internet terminal at my locals shopping centre, thanks to TPG!’

I could not have scripted a funnier response!

I would not mind so much if the company had stuck to its guns. But oh, after endless backlash, the company backed down. Such cowards. Stick to your guns! Why back down? The media pressure was too much to handle? Grow up and run your business the way you want to. However, don’t you dare get on that band wagon and say ‘We have listened’. What trite. Listened to who? If 10 people complain, you hang up on them. If 10,000 get on radio talk-back, you get soppy.

Anyway, why the rage here? Because we were all led to believe that you had cancelled that management mistake and that stupid decision. Yet, there is more confusion. Someone is a sneaky so and so. What’s the story Telstra? Here is what one reader of my site (and a family member) had to say via an email, so I am taking the liberty of sharing the rage with you:

‘Hi, I have just had another one of those unpleasant discussions with Telstra. You know how they announced that the payment fee we used to incur by using a credit card to pay by phone has been lifted! Well apparently we all misunderstood. The only way to avoid incurring that bill is if you are a pensioner. All credit card payments still incur a fee of $2.50. I had a few choice words and they finally gave me a credit of $10 to shut me up. But the fees are still there. You need to use a debit card or cash at the post office to avoid that fee.

‘Anyway I just thought you’d like to add that to the list of blogs. Of all the misrepresentations and lies and Bloody Telstra. All this in a country that has a democratic government, a banking ombudsman, a telecommunications ombudsman and consumer protection laws. At least we knew where we stood with the Khmer Rouge.’

How do these top level executives sleep at night? Disgraceful. Not for charging money, but for being so stupid with it. And what raised my dander was the remark by a Telstra executive who called on his competitors to also stop charging this payment fee. What bloody cheek. Who the hell does he and his company think they are to be calling on others to do the same? They go and make a big blunder which they would never have retracted if consumer-power had not prevailed, and now he is taking the mantle of Mr Nice Guy helping the poor ripped-off consumer. Oh pull your head in, the lot of you. When will executives realise that there is such a thing as civility?

Below is another example of small business people missing out on making customers. This small bakery was one that I had frequented regularly from the day that I moved nearby. Every day I would purchase a range of cakes and breads. Within two months, the quality started to decline. Walnut logs started to resemble walnut-crumb logs. The nuts were getting smaller. So, within two months of being a great customer, I stopped going there. That was eleven years ago. Imagine what a customer is worth over eleven years. Then the shop changed hands. Under new management, they started making excellent laminations. I started buying two dozen at a time for the office and for friends. Within two months, the laminations became smaller, and no longer made daily. The trays were cold, straight out of the fridge. This changed the texture of the cakes. So I stopped buying them. The store changed hands one more time, so I thought to support the new management. As you can see from the photo below, the image on the left is their idea of a date scone. The image on the right is the one from Bakers Delight only one minute up the road, in the supposedly evil shopping centre. Small business owners are quick to criticise the large operators or the well-managed franchise groups, yet they never seem to stop and see how small-minded they are when it comes to focussing on their core business.

The photo below shows a sushi train on the left. Notice that there are four staff members, and not a single customer. This is near Mary Street in Brisbane. Exactly opposite is a stir-fry eatery, which is shown as the photo on the right. These two establishments are opposite each other, in a small street. Day and night, the sushi train people could look across the road and wonder why that Asian eatery is so full, that people have to line-up, all the way out onto the street, to place their order. That restaurant does a roaring trade in both dine-in and takeaway. Being new to the area, I was unfamiliar with either store. And being in a hurry, unable to join the queue to place an order, I decided to frequent the sushi train. Within fifteen seconds, it dawned upon me as to why no-one dines there. The selection was sparse. The plates were approximately five seconds apart. And worst of all, the meal portions were measly and useless, at twenty-parts rice to one-part fish. If there was not the proof (right before their eyes across the road) that there are plenty of customers around, this Japanese shop might have made all sorts of excuses. I wonder if they stand there wondering why they have no customers? Maybe Brisbane folk don’t like Japanese food. Ah, that’s it. Problem found. Mystery solved. Woe are we. I shall keep my camera poised to snap the inevitable ‘For Sale’ sign when next I fly up to Brisbane.

The postman throws private mail though the gate. He has the option of returning the letters to the sender. He rides past each day and does not care to give the matter any thought. Important documents could assist an identify thief.

Any staff member who is executing a task, is an ‘executive’. We need executive decisions at the front line, made by the front-line staff. Unfortunately, people are not encouraged in this way. They are not allowed to deviate from the allocated tasks. In the photo above, we see that the people who were given the job of delivering the promotional catalogues and newspapers are not given the scope to care about the consequences. They will continue to deliver the junk mail because they are paid ‘per thousand’. It is in their interest to offload their wares. Besides, they know that a supervisor could conduct random checks, and if an item is not delivered, there would be unpleasant repercussions. In addition, advertisers might object to having juniors making decisions to skip a block of units. The solemn rule would be: Just do your job, and don’t worry about things that don’t concern you.

The only problem with this is that it permeates throughout an organisations where people cannot speak-up about obvious anomalies within the organisation. The ‘them and us’ syndrome will raise its ugly head. Sales people are told to look after customers, yet these sales people must never rock the boat. They cannot go to any other department and demand improvements or attention or service. Everyone sees that inefficiencies are rife. They dare not speak up. Some bosses are more powerful than others. Some are shareholders or sons of uncles, and as such, no-one wants to stick their neck out. So they just resign to the concept of covering the back side, and flying under the radar, and keeping one’s cake-hole shut.

Take a look at the photos below. What concerns me is not the pollution or the unsightly mess, but the years of schooling and all those government grants that go towards an education system. We churn out supervisors and managers who reign over younger employees. Collectively, where is the brain power? For what purpose was all that schooling. What kind of attitudes and work ethics are we promoting?

On the left, we see five weeks’ worth of papers. By the eight’s week, the delivery is still made.

As if it is not bad enough that the deliveries continue to be made, despite the obvious lack of interest by the residents who are obviously not home, the pollution and brainless action continues for months, until I called the newspaper and showed them these photos.

If someone litters a small chocolate wrapper, they could be fined $200. At which point does chucking wads of paper onto the ground move away from being a delivery, to outright littering? The distributors are doing what they are told, in accordance with how they are rewarded. The eight-week pile does not end there. The house in question can be seen below, along with all the other junk strewn every which way.

Are you sure that your organisation is not rewarding this type of lethargy and disregard? Having been a consultant for over ten years, and an active corporate warrior for a lot longer, I will boldly and emphatically say that most, as the almost all, corporations and bureaucracies and institutions suffer the same absurdity. Oh, where have all the leaders gone?

I am not watching this house in Pyrmont. I walk past it from time to time. My walks in the city are never dull.

The person who delivered these catalogues was keen to ensure that people received a copy. On the other hand, he might have been trying to find a loophole around a sign that said, 'No catalogues or mail-drop to be left on the premises'. Perhaps the Strata managers will now have to erect a new sign that reads, 'Only posted mail to be delivered. No junk mail permitted'.