I live in an outer suburb which is serviced by a Telstra only exchange.
If I lived *two blocks* further over I would have a choice.

In essence, I can only get ADSL2 from the Gorilla at 2-3 times more expensive than is readily available from opposition companies.

I have ordinary ADSL through another supplier because Telstra were mandated to share that facility at that level. In effect my supplier is a re-seller yet I get it cheaper that from the Big T direct.

I also note that Telstra ignore the "do not call" on my phone as they service it. I get regular calls to "check if I'm getting the best out of the services" (AKA to sell me Foxtel, Mobiles or ADSL2)

Clearly ADSL2 is (IMO) a nice to have but I refuse to be held to ransom for it.

I'm not complaining as such but wonder what others think of Telstra's high handed exploitist strategies.
There is a truism in Customer service ...."for every happy client you get 5 referrals, for every unhappy client you lose 10."

Corporations today simply don't care about the customer just their profit. It seems to me that the link between the two is unimportant if you are the biggest/available. i.e. Convenience and aspiration trumps customers individual needs. But doesn't that negate the principals of Capitalism...bending the silent hand of the customers (AKA market)up their back.

Sadly I could authoritatively point to multiple franchises that inhabit shopping centers that preach, "get as much as you can the first time there may not be a second opportunity".

Availability is the key. people will buy what is there rather than search. This is the reason shopping centres financially limit how many of which sellers goes in.

In supermarket the cash across the till is a just a part of these organizations profits. Profit is multi streamed and has little to do with the customer/choice or indeed the price, to the customer.

Anybody want to guess why we as a society are becoming more insular and indifferent to others.
R.I.P. a fair go?

*Corporations today simply don't care about the customer just their profit.*

Rubbish. Its a win-win situation because organisations who give
customers what they want, long term do better. Customers vote with
their wallets.

OTOH, if a corporation is pricing things so low that they don't
make a profit, then they won't have the capital to invest. So
they have to think long term.

When Telstra was a real Govt monopoly, they charged me up to 9$
an hour for internet access. Today its 1.50$ a day, for a
massively improved service. Frankly for 1.50, I think I'm getting
a bargain, compared to what else 1.50$ buys.

The problem that Telstra has is that it is forced to onsell
to so called retailers at bargain basement rates. Most of these
resellers invest in nothing but an office and drive us nuts with
calls from India, trying to win business.

Yet it is Telstra that has to come up with the billions of $
required to be invested each year in infrastructure and that money
has to come from somewhere.

What is showing too, is that you, the consumer, are becoming ever
fussier, not appreciating the great deals that are available to
you today, compared to 20 years ago. Yup, people have short
memories.

Don't know the answer to this one exammy. Good customer service is becoming rarer but not impossible to find in smaller family owned business or at producers' markets.

Remember the days when you phoned a company and actually got a person on the phone within seconds who helped you with your call. Now we get phone trees, and outsourced call centres where you don't know how much of your personal information is being handed on - particularly by banks.

Exammy this is why essential services like telecommunications, utilities and water etc should not be privatised. While there was much to bemoan about Telstra even when in government hands (lets face it they always had bad service), at least there was more accountability and a public duty to service rural areas.

What happened. Well the customer got the shaft but I am not sure why - when did it all go belly up. Customer service was not always seen as an 'efficiency dividend' but an assett to business. This was prior to the mantra of economic rationalisation.

One of my close work colleagues used to work for a big organisation and he put it that customer service was a risk management exercise. Balancing the drive for profits with managing costs was tricky - ensuring enough customer service and lower complaints versus less customer service and writing off the complaints as part of the risk management process and bigger profits due to reduced labour costs.

But in this industry he said everyone was doing the same so as long as most of the bigger players were doing it, the competitive aspect was not a big concern.

As consumers we can still vote with our wallets but only in those industries where there is not collusion or price fixing strategies. The free market fails often to provide real competition when there are failures in regulatory bodies like the ACC or ASIC.

Maybe because everyone is getting greedier, consumers, business and shareholders alike, it all has a cyclic flow on effect.

"Corporations today simply don't care about the customer just their profit."

Indeed they do. Todays business is based on profit, with service a very poor second.

This is vastly different to a time when profit was necessary, but service was a matter of pride to a company,- and not considered a necessary casualty in the pursuit of profit.

This is not only apparent, but glaringly so.....

*Maybe because everyone is getting greedier, consumers, business and shareholders alike*

Ah, very true. At least you are not just blaming it all on those
"evil corporations", as so many do.

Of course service has gone downhill. Because the real cost of
labour has skyrocketed in the last 20 years. So you are not
going to get ever cheaper telecommunications and ever cheaper
consumer goods, whilst its costing the company around 50$ an
hour to employ somebody, to listen to your problems.

That 50$ an hour is a pretty good ballpark figure to work from,
when you add up all costs.

But consumers want to haggle about paying 1.50$ a day for internet
access and be upset if somebody is not there at their beck and call,
when they have a problem.

So perhaps Examinator, it is just your consumer greed that is
the real problem :)

What about the pressure to meet short term financial goals and the focus of CEOs and senior managers on excessive annual bonuses?

Cornflour, targets are set by boards and they are answerable to
shareholders. The largest sharedholers are superfunds, who hold shares
on behalf of everyday people like yourself and Examinator. For if
your pension was going backwards, many of you would be the first to
complain.

Managers salaries simply don't matter in the bigger scheme of things,
for the number of people involved is tiny and the amounts very small,
in relation to the billions at stake. Let's say that Telstra paid
their top few people nothing and wanted them to work for free.
With say 10 million customers that might add up to 1-2$ per year,
per customer. OTOH a good CEO can save a company like that billions
and good CEOs are not going to work for a gold watch.

I'm the first to complain about Telstra, but I also realise the
magnitude of the problems that they face. I was actually pleasantly
surprised in March, when an electrical storm did huge damage to
Perth, including killing 50 of my sheep which were huddled under
the wrong tree. A bloke came out and fixed the problem on my line,
the same day as I rang up. When I got to chat with him whilst testing,
it came out that Telstra had flown him and some of his mates
over from Sydney, to help with the Perth repairs of the lines.
That is not cheap and I was impressed that they were trying so hard.

Telstra's big problem still remains that they have different divisions,
which don't communicate with each other. One division
does not know what the other is doing, so when you get passed across,
you land up in no man's land. But that originates back from the days
of Govt ownership.

Sol at least fixed their billing division, you get one bill for all
services, which is clearly far more efficient. But their big
problem remains just maintaining profits, because more and more
young people are dumping their land lines and do it all by mobile.

Telstra's biggest expense remains spending billions each
year on upgrading infrastructure.

HEY GINX..let's u and me have a wallow in the mud of 'slime a capo' :)

Check this out mate.

http://www.generationim.com/about/team.html

See who is the chaiman!

Now..*see this*

http://www.climateexchangeplc.com/investor-relations/shares-in-issue-top-10-holders

Go down to number 5 on the list.. see any connection ?

What does 'Climate Exchange' do ? how does it make money ?

What does Al Gore 'do' ? how does he make money ? :)

There you go.. next time you rock up to "Resistance" at Druids house you can all have a free freeding frenzy on a 'Green' Watermelon in the form of Al Gore.

WAIT...there's more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Strong

Check him out..... The EArth summit of 1992 was a pre-cursor to Kyoto.
Kyoto means 'carbon trading' and lots and lots and lots of $$$$

Now see this!

http://www.chicagoclimatex.com/content.jsf?id=67

scroll down to the 8th name... *BINGO*

Do you see it all now ?

Yabby,
The main problem with Telstra is that it appears to to adopt a scale for it's customer service. Provide excellent technical service but an equally atrocious after sales service. I wouldn't say that several 1 hr or more calls are acceptable. Top this with five SR-1 numbers for the same product and yet still no product after two months. Having told them the correct address many times & yet they still say unconfirmed address after each time they tell you that the item has been posted. Have you ever tried to call Telstra to get answers to a query ? They don't even have a number to call !
I appreciate what the technical personnel are doing within Telstra but their customer service has to count among the worst in all industry.

Individual, I actually happen to agree with you on that one. I had a
major drama trying to replace a modem, was told it would be sent,
it never arrived.

I've actually had follow up calls too, from management, trying to
evaluate their service and what they are doing. It seems to me that
they have a number of issues, which have yet to be resolved.

Communication between different parts of Telstra with one another.
Quality of some of the staff they hire, some are not the brightest.
Staff training, more is needed, certainly on their internet side of
things

Sorry Yabby I had to laugh at this one..."answerable to shareholders". Not the mum and dad shareholders who have little power to cap executive salaries, who have no power re compulsory acquisitions and in truth have no decision making power. They just provide the monopoly money.

Greed might be endemic to many groups Yabby including consumers and shareholders, but you must concede that no other group compares with the greed of the big end of town. To dismiss it as just another tall poppy syndrome ie. "those evil nasty corporations" is to miss the point of the systemic problems within our capitalist economy.

Apparently Four Corners tonight is doing something about the failure of the banking industry in the US. Worth a watch especially for those who think the system is working.

It is madness when we are talking about billions of dollars in profits these days and some still moaning about the cost of labour. Labour has value. There are many jobs where the minimum wage is barely a living wage - yet the focus is still on obscene profits.

*but you must concede that no other group compares with the greed of the big end of town.*

Not so Pelican. Nothing I've seen compares to the greed for political
power. Politicians sell their souls for it. Most of the business
community, actually have some integrity.

*and in truth have no decision making power. They just provide the monopoly money.*

Clearly you don't go to shareholder meetings :) You would be amazed,
how much individual shareholders sometimes have to say. When Wesfarmers owned sawmills, the greenies would turn up with their
5 shares or whatever and would protest, AGM after AGM. So Wesfarmers
sold their sawmills, problem fixed.

*It is madness when we are talking about billions of dollars in profits these days and some still moaning about the cost of labour. Labour has value.*

So does money. That trillion $ in super savings that workers have,
they want a return for it, to pay their pensions. Or are you suggesting that we cut pensions instead? What return do you expect
on your savings, given that inflation runs at 3-4%?

So Yabby you think this comes down to a choice between the value of labour and the value of pensions? You are arguing with someone who does not think retirement security should rest solely with the ebb and flow of the private sector. Certainly not while cowboys have unfettered free range in the markets.

Political greed is the same as economic greed, in fact they are entwined but the strings are usually held by the big players - you only have to look at the pressure on government in regard to mining taxes. It will come down to blackmail and threats as usual, and government willpower will no doubt crumble under that pressure.

Examinator's point is valid - the customer (and the employee) are at the bottom of the food chain in the current equation.

*So Yabby you think this comes down to a choice between the value of labour and the value of pensions?*

No, I am saying that they both have to be considered. That is exactly
what we do, with our present system.

*You are arguing with someone who does not think retirement security should rest solely with the ebb and flow of the private sector.*

Pelican, if you prefer to trust the promises of some politician,
that in 25 years he will look after you, go for it lol. Some of
us don't have your faith in the State and also take note of the
State pointing out, that they simply won't have the money. So
we provision for our own retirement. Those bank, mining and other
company profits and dividends sent out, are real money!

Besides, if the private sector should collapse, so would the Govt,
as they would not have an income and people would not have jobs.

*you only have to look at the pressure on government in regard to mining taxes*

I should hope that they are pressured, for we are not all yet slaves
of the State and Kevie's powers end at Australia's borders. Investment
money will simply go off shore, if its not wanted here, or people try
to use it, to enhance their own political power. A belief in fairness
is fundamental in life.

*Examinator's point is valid*

Nope its not valid. For any businessman who knows a thing about
business will tell you that the customer votes with his wallet,
so take notice of what they want, or they will go elsewhere.

Apple is not having the huge success that it is, because it is
producing products that consumers don't want to buy. Steve Jobs
has a knack of predicting and creating what consumers will want
and their sales figures show he is correct.

Yabby, "Cornflour, targets are set by boards and they are answerable to
shareholders. The largest sharedholers are superfunds, who hold shares
on behalf of everyday people like yourself and Examinator"

Yet some of those large super funds have made exactly the same comments as I did.

Dear Examy,

I can't complain about customer service.
In my dealings with Telstra I've never had
a problem. Sure, they post notices on my
email, leave messages on my mobile, but
I usually don't pay that much attention
to them, I just delete them.

As for phone calls, have you had the persistence
of "India calling?" We even resorted to tell
them that the person they want to speak to is
in a nursing home, but they still keep calling,
so I just ask them to hold the line, walk away,
and leave them hanging and waiting, until they
eventually hang up.

Another alternative is of course, always leave the
answering machine on. When they hear the message
bank, they hang up.

However, with Telstra, I often ring up for technical
assistance on my computer, and I never have any
problems. The guys even ring back to see if everything's
working at a later time.

I'm usually very grateful for any assistance given,
I've very rarely had problems in my
dealings with people. Be it with Telstra,
Australain Government Agencies, other large regional
libraries, City Councils, University Departments,
or even theatre ticket outlets, supermarkets,
post offices, or medical facilities.
Staff usually are very co-operative and genuinely
try to help.

Yabby
My faith in the State is probably on close examination, not much different to yours. It really boils down to how strong is one's faith in the private markets to sort things out to a win-win situation.

At least with the State there are some guarantees and some accountability (even if only at election time if they stuff things beyond the point of no return).

The point is, customer service in many cases is not viewed as a worthy factor in competition for the reasons already outlined. For competition there has to be a choice, when there is not much to distinguish the players, competition is removed.

I would like to have your faith in the private sector, but historically they fall short as well but with far less accountability and no strength from ASIC or ACC often to ensure the rules are observed.

It is getting the mix right between private and public - tip the scales too much one way or the other has not worked well in any nation as yet which is why Australia despite its faults does not do too badly as a Social Democracy. What is concerning is we are moving more away from those ideals - ideals expoused once even by the Liberal Party. Customer service is one of the casualties that is really all I am saying.

*Apparently Four Corners tonight is doing something about the failure of the banking industry in the US. Worth a watch especially for those who think the system is working.*

Pelican, I watched that programme. There was not alot new, as I'd
seen the original Levin interrogation of Goldman on Bloomberg, it
ran for some hours.

It seems to me that the word "bank" confuses alot of people, for
of course so called investment banks are not actually banks and
they are generally unregulated, as distinct from savings banks, which
are heavily regulated.

What constantly amazes me, is how trusting of the "system" that
people are, then they are amazed when they get burned. Its very
sad, it really is.

There is no way that an ACC or similar can protect people from all
those sharks out there. I certainly don't trust financial advisors,
for they are paid commissions and its naive to think that people won't
act out fo self interest.

I felt really sorry for Margie Parkes the artist, but when people
invest in hedge funds and similar, they really are playing with fire.

Its not just finance, for if people go and invest in antiques, art,
persian carpets, houses or anything really and don't know what they
are doing, somebody is bound to rip them off.

So how do we teach people to be more skeptical and less trusting?
I really don't know, for it seems that they only seem to learn,
once they have been burnt.

Its been my experience that those who get burned are often greedy,
believing stories about super returns etc.

I tend to stick with direct investments in top 200 ASX listed
companies, which are poured over daily by analysts and if they
even fart, it is reported. So the scrutiny is huge, but they
are everyday companies on which most of us rely on, in our daily
transactions. The big banks, the big miners, the big retailers etc.
The idea is to pay attention to what mommy said and not put all your
eggs in one basket either.

Whether or not Telstra or anyone else providing comms infrastructure in Australia has the customer's interests foremost IS highly questionable.

I have had my share of everything from the downright appalling to the excellent. Setting aside the corporate mantras for a moment, telecomms and associated business has become so complex that even the staff cannot cope. The "excellent" above was when I struck one of the able and willing folks at the end of a long telephone conversation (some of which was a computer voice) After I learned how to shunt that to where it belongs (the bin) I was helped. That's pure luck. There is no comparison whatever with a forward looking retail business like Apple.

Lastly, a Telstra insider who had responded to a series of complaints about Next G reception invited me to come in personally to an inner sanctum and pick an alternative phone. At the same time, I asked him why there was zero Next G service in a particular area. The answer was simple and frank. Telstra does not wish to install more infrastructure in the area... but here's a tip he said. Switch your phone off. Wait, re-start and you'll almost certainly pick up a mining company cell phone service. And this on one of WA's busiest remote highways. Pure luck again.

In the area in which I live, Telstra has been promising to install a 3G tower for over 2 years. Without it, there is no Telstra mobile reception in our town since they canned the CDMA service.

As it happens, I sell mobile phones. However, I refuse to stock phones locked to the Telstra network until they install the infrastructure they need to work, because I got sick and tired of fielding legitimate customer complaints on Telstra's behalf.

In my business, we no longer deal with Telstra for our landline, Internet or mobile services, due entirely to their appalling service. We changed to iiNet, whose service has been close to faultless for 18 months now.

You're right Yabby the program pretty much repeated what we already knew only with a direct focus on Timberwolf and hedge funds.

My husband and I have a mobile phone with two different companies (Telstra and Optus) and we are often amazed at how often one or both of us lose reception, sometimes only four hours away from Sydney or two from Canberra, hardly the back of Bourke.

Thank you everyone for responding.

The issue wasn't really the "gorilla" per se. This was just an example of how the conflicting principals of corporations. I don't believe for a moment that The Big T would loose money by offering me market rates on ADSL2. They simply know that they have too they can and will swamp me if I try to assert the little market power I have.
The court records are full of corporations unsuccessful actions to defend their heavy handed/dubious tactics .

The bigger a corporation gets the less concerned it become about the individual.

Yabby's convenient memory ignores the endless lists of businesses and individuals who have suffered unnecessarily at the hands of Big business's pre occupation with profit. From big Oil, Big packaging, Big wheat, Big currency, big tobacco, Big manufacturers, Big Chemical, Supermarkets, to Big Phama and beyond can easily be shown to support my contention. They regularly bend, manipulate,avoid, influence laws in their favour rather than accepting or abiding by them.

It is patently naive and/or incredibly myopic to assert that any or all of the above give a rat's smelly bits about the individual. Even less credible to suggest that the silent hand of the market is an effective control. it all boils down to financial power and the abuses they engender.

*Yabby's convenient memory ignores the endless lists of businesses and individuals who have suffered unnecessarily at the hands of Big business's pre occupation with profit.*

Examinator, we could equally make lists of people who suffered at the
hands of men, or at the hands of women, or at the hands of Australians. Or the hands of politicians greedy for power.

People who work for and run corporations are everyday people, many
just perhaps smarter then you :)

That said, corporations are not the salvation army, nor do they
claim to be, for that is not their role. If you want charity, go
to a charity.

*They regularly bend, manipulate,avoid, influence laws in their favour rather than accepting or abiding by them.*

So everyday individuals don't do these things? On what planet are
you living? What about politicians?

*It is patently naive and/or incredibly myopic to assert that any or all of the above give a rat's smelly bits about the individual.*

They certainly do, for they want your money. So they take endless trouble
to find out, what could make you spend it with them. Unlike Govts,
who have the right to expropriate it legally and by force.

So they have to convince you, unlike Govts who can force you, even
if you did not vote for them and you have to accept mob rule.

So tell me Examinator, how much do you pay for internet access and
do you think it is value for money?

Yabby
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10317817.stm
Let's see you explain this away?

Face old mate Corporation don't give a stuff. Unless dragged kicking and screaming before a fait compete .(so my french is suss)

Examinator, I don't need to explain anything away. I watched
some of those interviews on Bloomberg.

As it happens, the regulators who were meant to be regulating all
this, were told by politicians that companies would regulate themselves.
Do you remember a Mr Bush? This is of course a furphy,
as we saw in the gulf, as we saw on Wall St.

Corporations are made up of individuals and some of those individuals
push the limits, break laws, just like other individuals do.
They are no different to you, your neighbour, the bloke down the
road, who as individuals push the limits, sometimes break laws
etc.

For some strange reason you just seem to have a bee in your bonnet
about corporations. Do you think that politicians are never reckless,
never break rules?

That is exactly why we need checks and balances in society and
a separation of the powers. If they fail, our society starts to
fail.

Greedy people, selfish people, dishonest people exist at all levels
of society. But a bee in your bonnet about corporations, is
something that you seem to have a real chip on your shoulder about.

There are in fact plenty of law abiding, productive and honest
corporations out there, just as there are people much the same.
For it is people who run them in the end.

Yabby,
A. it's not an interview its a report.
B. It's a matter of Scale
Your argument is so shallow as to be meaningless.

You are trying to argue the equivalent of excusing the excesses of a genocidal army because there are individual murderers.
Pure Bolitics! old boy.

*You are trying to argue the equivalent of excusing the excesses of a genocidal army because there are individual murderers*

Bollocks. Nobody set out to murder anyone. The interviews gave
a reavealing insight into what was needed to write the report.

You of all people, who always go on about things being more
complex then they first appear, just write it all down to
corporations.

But corporations are made up of lots of employees, many who
make poor judgement calls. To understand this kind of thing,
you need to study the details and at what level decisions
were made and why.

For a society to function, for a corporation to function,
you need checks and balances. When things get out of whack
you commonly land up with disaster, as history shows.

Poor politicians can be as much to blame as poor employees
of corporations.

If you don't understand these fundamantals, then you have
little understanding of basic human nature

Yabby
The word is Bolitics .....a cross between Bollocks and your Malthusian
excuse for politics.

Examinator, ok, so you cannot answer my points, I did not expect
you to.

Perhaps sometime you should spend just a bit of time thinking about
greedy consumers for a change. Today on radio, people rang in to
say what tricks they got up to, to obtain a refund from stores.
Their greed and fraud has no limits!

Fact is that today most businesses understand one thing. There
is a certain % of consumers, who are never satisfied. They will
always complain, always want things even cheaper, they lack all
ability to think objectively. The best thing with those is to
encourage them to shop elsewhere!

............the worst thing by far in todays so-called customer service is those who justify it.

Yabby,
not can't ....won't you are, as usual off topic.