Easter Saturday morning I enjoyed a live on-line chat with iconic Wellington talkback host Garry Ward. I talk to him about matters telecommunicatory a couple of times a year.

After the usual chitchat Garry told me - and his listeners - that the previous week he had occasion to phone his telecommunications company and was kept waiting for the call centre to answer for 67 minutes. You got it - more than an hour!

Garry named the company on air. I'm not about to here because I honestly believe it could have been any of them, so bad has the telecommunications industry's customer service become.

Back in 2004 Minister Swain took the industry to task about its sluggishness in dealing with customer complaints. He threatened to regulate, enforcing an industry specific complaints authority like those operating in banking and electricity. TUANZ at the time sided with the industry and asked for an industry-driven scheme in preference to a regulated one. Its been on its way via the Telecommunications Carriers Forum ever since and it will be a good scheme, but its taking far, far, far too long.

Even longer, you might say, than you wait "on hold" for a typical carrier's contact centre to answer!

Delays like this are unacceptable in any sector - they show contempt for the caller and wreck the nice warm fuzzy feeling the marketing departments try so hard to engender. In utility industries - where people's lives and businesses are often "on hold" with them and where there is a great imbalance of power between buyer and seller - companies have a special responsibility to be easily contactable.

The TCF needs to accelerate its work, and the phone companies MUST pay attention to waiting times for contact centres. This kind of experience shows the industry in a very bad light indeed.