The Daily Telegraph, Sydney, 29 July 2000
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HERE
YOU'VE treated me like dirt virtually my whole life. Ripped me off, exploited me all those years when we both knew I had no choice but to stay. But now I've come back. Because, well, I miss you. I'm sorry I ever left. So goes the sentiment of a bizarre new television campaign from Telstra. It is a series of commercials based on phone calls to Telstra's complaints department, customers yelling down the line about why they left the company, i.e. crummy customer service. Now, apparently these disgruntled souls have come back to the fold, a sort of ``better the devil you know'' outlook on the world. What is going on? Has the corporate service industry in this country so embraced the concept of sub-standard relationships with its customers that it can now sell itself on its reputation for mediocrity? Still, to be fair, I must confess up-front that I have held a slightly unhealthy grudge against Telstra/Telecom for a long time. It was back in the days of the great telecommunications monopoly in Australia, when there was only Telecom, when making a phone call overseas would mean thinking about taking out a second mortgage on the family home. As a child, I used to watch Telecom's grandiose TV ads and think, ``Why are they telling me how wonderful they are? We don't have a choice in the matter, do we daddy?'' Well, I've had my own Telecom/Telstra account for close to a decade. As soon as the competition came, I jumped from Telstra as my long distance provider. I will probably never go back -- even though I stayed with the company for local calls, despite slightly cheaper alternatives. Am I sucker? Well, let me share some of my recent communications with Telstra. First, there was the recorded message that popped up every time I picked up the phone to make a call, telling me my bill was overdue and I better get that fixed, quick smart. I have always received a little subversive pleasure from paying my Telstra bill late, waiting for the second ``overdue reminder'' to come in the mail, just for the fun of bucking the system in my own little way. Now I am told there will be an additional charge of $5.50 on my next bill if I ever pay late again. God help anyone who actually has some difficulty in meeting their bill. As it happens, I did pay my last Telstra bill as soon as I got it -- well, the half of it that wasn't already overdue -- simply to beat the GST on one last thing. So imagine my surprise when a couple of weeks later, I still received my regular Telstra overdue notice. This one was for $108.25 of ``miscellaneous adjustments''. Naturally, I called the Telstra complaints line (I wonder if that means I'm going to end up in a TV ad) to ask exactly what was meant by ``miscellaneous adjustments''. When I finally got through, and after some investigative work by the woman on the other end of the line, it turned out that earlier this year, some other person's cheque had mysteriously ended up in my account. Whatever! Here's more of my hard earned dollars, Telstra. I just feel sorry for the person whose cheque it was. So, when these ads popped up this week, I had to phone the number given to see exactly what Telstra was trying to tell me: If things were so bad back then, what has changed? Why should people go back? Well, I got cut off the first time I tried to get through (there's another 22c Telstra -- choke on it). ``What is your ad about?'' I asked the woman who picked up on my second attempt. ``What ad?'' she asked. ``The one telling me to call this number,'' I said. ``You're supposed to tell me why I should come back,'' I told her. The woman suddenly started speaking more slowly. ``Well, I haven't seen the ad,'' she told me. ``But if you want to come back to Telstra, I can send you a form.'' A form? More bureaucracy? More paper work? Oh, I see -- there's comfort in the fact that nothing has changed at all.
