Comments for Vaughan Rowsell

Comment on Telecom, your customers are not lying douches, you are. by @onslaught86

@onslaught86 — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 23:51:50 +0000

Wow. What an utter waste of both your – and their – time. There is a blatant and obvious model number difference between the Galaxy S i9000 with 900/2100mhz UMTS support and the Galaxy S i9000T (Note the T!) with 850/2100mhz UMTS support. It’s obvious from the bootscreen. It’s also obvious if you bought it from TCNZ, because they loaded a bunch of ugly icons and bloatware onto it. It’d be even more obvious if you’d purchased an i9000T from somewhere else, because the most common place to get that model from internationally is Telstra Australia, who load even more bloatware and branding onto their handsets than you’d believe. FWIW, no amount of ‘hacking’ will liven the 850mhz band on the i9000, it does not have the hardware (The Galaxy S II i9100 also has a ‘T’ model, but no-one is quite sure why, since both of them support the 850mhz band ‘and’ the 900mhz band).

It’s both the fault of their inaccurate website and poor frontline staff training. As people on Geekzone presumably told you, the difference between the two models is obvious to any smartphone enthusiast – not so much the layperson, but it’s hardly ‘your’ job to sell people the XT network and understand its intricacies, is it? ( That said, there’s more of a case to be made for the vast numbers of ~$1k phones on TradeMe with “Herp Derp I didn’t realise it wouldn’t work on XT” in the description – if you’re going to buy an expensive open market handset, do your homework first).

I’m really rather slow-clap-impressed that you went through multiple tiers of tech support without someone saying “Wait, is there a T after your model number?” Smartphones, being such a consumer-focused technology, have in some cases led to the consumer being the most informed party. At this point, you have quite the strong case, and as far as I’m concerned it’d be the least TCNZ can do to send your poor wife an i9000T. A much better gesture would be to upgrade her to the i9100(“T”) free of charge.

I work in the industry, so can relate to your predicament (Though not for TCNZ – I do have friends that work for them, unfortunately none in your area). These sorts of scenarios are sadly all too common, where anyone along the way with a little bit of crucial knowledge about the products they sell – beyond the basic training guides – would have been able to put a stop to it properly.

Best of luck in the resolution.

Comment on Telecom, your customers are not lying douches, you are. by @marklincoln

@marklincoln — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 21:42:20 +0000

To further elaborate – I had patchy internet connection at home with TelstraClear after Sep earthquake. Despite having to work from home (office in the red zone) I put up with it for a good couple of weeks as I knew there were plenty of people in a worse off situation. Finally it was slowing me down so much for work I had to call them. Had heaps of problems convincing their customer service team to send a tech. First tech arrived, did nothing, left. Still had the problem so called again, repeatedly, before convincing them again to send another tech. Same deal. Called AGAIN and the third tech fixed the problem straight away. As I’d lost so much work time not only because of patchy internet but also because I’d spent 3 x half days on the phone to Telstra, I asked for compensation in the form of money off my bill. Made sense to me as I was paying a premium for a service that I wasn’t getting, plus their customer service and tech teams had repeatedly failed to solve or even properly address the problem. Telstra actually told me that *I* had to call their technician contractors because the problem was with them, not with Telstra. I pointed out that I paid my money to Telstra and it was their duty to resolve issues with their own contractors, not mine. They disagreed and I was put through to some tradesman contractor who clearly really didn’t give a flying fark about my situation (and why should he? He’s not employed to provide customer service or resolve account issues). He finally called back and said he’d arrange for a small rebate on my bill for that month, equal to the past 7 days or so (the day that the 1st tech arrived). I said the issue went back well before then and he said his records showed I hadn’t reported the issue earlier so everything must have been fine. Cheers mate.

Comment on Telecom, your customers are not lying douches, you are. by @marklincoln

@marklincoln — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 21:16:06 +0000

Great story mate – very well told and unfortunately it all sounds so hauntingly familiar. Not just with Telecom customer service but with every company I’ve had to call in the need of support! TelstraClear are my favourites but CourierPost isn’t too far behind with the same old story. Very sad.

Comment on Telecom, your customers are not lying douches, you are. by Jessica

Jessica — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 10:26:07 +0000

I had almost the exactly same shenanigans with Telecom back in 2007 trying to get a number ported. It took them 10 days and when I eventually got a hold of a direct dial number of a customer resolution member I discovered that NONE of the call centre people I had spoken to had opened my file since day two of me not having an operational number. I was not impressed, I immediately moved to Vodafone because moving a number is easy as pulling out a SIM card, even if they have a crap network.

Comment on Telecom, your customers are not lying douches, you are. by Hayden

Hayden — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 10:18:49 +0000

Sounds immensely frustrating. Keep fighting it though Vaughan, they probably rely on 99% of people getting so frustrated that they just give up.

Comment on Telecom, your customers are not lying douches, you are. by Markus

Markus — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 06:48:04 +0000

… since the second we could swap from a telecom landline to anything else, we did, and since then have never (directly at least) given them a cent. 2degrees ftw

Comment on Telecom, your customers are not lying douches, you are. by Kyle

Kyle — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 06:05:33 +0000

Power is and has always been with the consumer – choose to stop buying and watch em pucker!

Don’t take any of it V man!

Comment on Telecom, your customers are not lying douches, you are. by Chris

Chris — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 06:02:55 +0000

Bro, my deepest sympathies.

Read it all and I’ve seen it played out so many times. (I work at Dick Smith in the South where we only use 850mhz).

Everything you said is true; Telecom employees are usually pretty ignorant of how XT works and having Leading Edge branded Telecom spreading misinformation gives me and my customers huge headaches.

Unfortunately your options are few:
Switch back to Vodafone or switch to 2degrees.

That phone will not ever work on Telecom perfectly so short of selling and buying the Telecom model it’s not gonna happen.

There’s no way you should pay Telecom anything though.
Their representative misled you. Your local community lawyer will tell you the same. Therefore the offending party (Botany Leading Edge) needs to take one for the team and swallow the loss. End of story.

You get your sincere apology for the runaround, your money back and they can keep their integrity.

Anything short is just begging for Fair Go/Target to get involved.

Comment on Telecom, your customers are not lying douches, you are. by Vaughan Rowsell

Vaughan Rowsell — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 05:58:15 +0000

Thanks. Am checking out 2Degrees at the moment. Should have listened to me mate Rhys

Comment on Telecom, your customers are not lying douches, you are. by Phil

Phil — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 05:54:17 +0000

I have yet to hear of any complaints of this magnitude from 2Degrees. Their service has always been exemplary in my observations.

FWIW I really feel your frustration. Regrettably, Vodafone can’t claim to be any better in their customer service standards.