[TelstraClear] Petition for TelstraClear to change its process

Forums › One New Zealand (including Vodafone, WxC, Farmside) › [TelstraClear] Petition for TelstraClear to change its process

JAMMAN2110

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#9748 10-Oct-2006 17:30

Don't get me wrong - I love my cable internet but we all know that TCL is riddled with issues lately, the issue is NEVER on their end according to customer service. They instead book a technician to go out and check, normally after the fault has gone away. I'm not saying they don't offer great services, they do. But isn't it about time they started to some things to certain standards? like:

Checking for other faults in your area when you call, like monitored alarms and power failures.
Continuous outages - we pay for the service..
Refusing to check for things

The list does continue on, if you wish to add something please do.. There are currently 21 threads on Geekzone about TCL outages, issues and failures! It is growing daily...

Anybody Concur? If this thread say reaches a decent amount of agreements I will personally contact TelstraClear, even if I have to go into Wellingtons 'new flagship' store and get the manager to look at the thread and pass it on.

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BDFL - Memuneh
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#48229 10-Oct-2006 17:34

I am sure they know about these issues - and although their customer services procedures are not updated yet, things are being worked (or so I believe).

But you are right. The first thing to do when someone calls and complain of an outage is try to identify if other callers in the area reported similar problems. As it is now, the TCL person always offer to "send a technician", just to have your connection back a few hours later. Then you have to call and wait another 45 minutes on hold just to cancel the technician that they booked in first place, unnecesseraily.

But, yes, I am told people know there are problems there.

JAMMAN2110

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#48231 10-Oct-2006 18:02

But are the people that know doing anything about them?

Matt1

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#48238 10-Oct-2006 19:01

I agree with what others are saying. TelstraClear we want to love your services, but you make it very difficult for your users by not backing good products up with good service.

Key priorities on my list would be:

- Sort out Cable Internet. You've got the best internet product in the country and yet loyal customers experience nothing but ongoing reliability problems. If it's customer growth causing problems, deal with it. Stop pushing sign-ups and concentrate on your existing customers.

- Sort out Digital TV. Transmission quality is perhaps something out of your control on channels like TV3, but hardware is somehting you can. You can be a far more competetive product with sky if you could offer high quality connections to televisions. Consumers with large LCDs and Plasmas can obviously afford to pay for quality - why not target that market by providing TV afficionados with a premium product.

-Devise a faults resolution service that's more proactive. As others have said, if there's a problem in premises, why not compile problems geographically to look for trends? In my case, a connection that was dropping every few hours was fixed by tweaking a "Line attenuator" in the street so that upstream and downstream flows were balanced. This not only fixed my problem, but probably those of others in surrounding streets.

- Do something about your phone system!! I have lost count of how many times phone calls and requests have "fallen into the abyss" with no record showing that I ever asked for anything to be done. I was even told months after moving house that i shouldn't have internet at all because our cable modem was still "tied" to our old address.

Consumers don't like unreliability and most of all hate having to call TelstraClear to turn promises into reality, the recent cable speed upgrade being a prime example.

sbiddle

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#48239 10-Oct-2006 19:09

Matt1: I agree with what others are saying. TelstraClear we want to love your services, but you make it very difficult for your users by not backing good products up with good service.

Key priorities on my list would be:

- Sort out Cable Internet. You've got the best internet product in the country and yet loyal customers experience nothing but ongoing reliability problems. If it's customer growth causing problems, deal with it. Stop pushing sign-ups and concentrate on your existing customers.

- Sort out Digital TV. Transmission quality is perhaps something out of your control on channels like TV3, but hardware is somehting you can. You can be a far more competetive product with sky if you could offer high quality connections to televisions. Consumers with large LCDs and Plasmas can obviously afford to pay for quality - why not target that market by providing TV afficionados with a premium product.

-Devise a faults resolution service that's more proactive. As others have said, if there's a problem in premises, why not compile problems geographically to look for trends? In my case, a connection that was dropping every few hours was fixed by tweaking a "Line attenuator" in the street so that upstream and downstream flows were balanced. This not only fixed my problem, but probably those of others in surrounding streets.

- Do something about your phone system!! I have lost count of how many times phone calls and requests have "fallen into the abyss" with no record showing that I ever asked for anything to be done. I was even told months after moving house that i shouldn't have internet at all because our cable modem was still "tied" to our old address.

Consumers don't like unreliability and most of all hate having to call TelstraClear to turn promises into reality, the recent cable speed upgrade being a prime example.

You should go and get a job at TCL! :-)

It would be great to get an official TCL response to this thread, maybe a few of their lurkers who are on this site can do that.

bigqueez

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#48766 16-Oct-2006 10:03

Once again TCL has let me down. I had a technician booked for this morning to investigate problems with my cable internet...the time they were booked for came and went. I called TCL to find out what the problem was, and apparently they have no record of this booking. They can't get a tech out to me until Wednesday.

My internet was extremely unstable during late afternoon yesterday. I spoke to someone on the phone yesterday about this and he was rude and patronising. Statements such as "I spoke to you a month ago and I know what your problem is" and "there are other people in the queue waiting" give you an idea as to the tone of this call. I asked to speak to his supervisor and instead he put me through to the customer complaints answering machine.

What kind of company is this incompetent? It's a wonder they have any customers...

I most definitely support this petition.

Loftus

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#48877 17-Oct-2006 18:46

Has anyone else tried the online customer service form (On the TCL web page)? I had an issue with the internet connection part of the InHome triple package that had recently been installed. I left the email on Sunday evening, and by mid-morning on Monday the issue was completely resolved.

Seems like a reasonable alternative to the CSR phone system - if you can access the web in the first place, of course!

Matt1

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#48881 17-Oct-2006 18:57

I've tried that Online help thing. Man it's annoying! Ask a question, prewritten answers get sent back, fill in the box saying "this doesn't answer my question" and continue in an endless loop of emails that don't answer your question. How do you get through to a real person?

Interesting to see the following in the Infotech section of the DomPost yesterday, inside an article on the new Testra Store:

"The Wellington store opened as TelstraClear issued an apology for glitches that have resulted in customers frequently being unable to access the Internet over its cable network for short periods.

Spokeswoman Jodine Laing says the telco has been adding extra capacity to the network and that this had caused some outages.

The latest problems were due to difficulties with its core cable modem network management system, which TelstraClear will replace next month she says. 'The redesign of the network will accommodate future growth and better services. We apologise for any inconvenience while we complete this network redesign, build capacity and allow for more advances systems on the network'."

OK TelstraClear, we all like seeing that you're doing maintenance and hopefully altering equipment so you can offer us higher connection speeds. But why not notify all your customers that it is upgrades that are causing the drop outs that have been so common in the past wee while? This article makes it sound as though there was an apology sent around to customers. Has anyone else heard about this through TelstraClear official sources? The first I heard of this was talking to their network contractors a fortnight ago.

P.S. I've tried that Online help thing. Man it's annoying! Ask a question, prewritten answers get sent back, fill in the box saying "this doesn't answer my question" and continue in an endless loop of emails that don't answer your question. How do you get through to a real person?

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bigqueez

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#48915 17-Oct-2006 21:11

That is ridiculous. They apologise via the Dom Post but dont have to decency to notify their customers of these issues. Even the CSR's I have spoken to have vigorously denied that my issues have been anything to do with their network.

I also have tried the online help, but it took a long time to get a reply, and my detailed enquiry earned a standard template reply.

MrMeargi

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#49000 19-Oct-2006 00:04

I could loosley be called a"Lurker" one who has Ties to th ebig daddy company,
I appreciate your frustrations are very real, unfortunately it's hard to give a real strong answer in
a Forum like this as What is causing problems, and when it will be fixed as it often
comes down to Commercially sensitive.

if you visit site like Howstuffworks.com it has some really great info On the difference between ADSlow and
CAble - and what happens when a Cable gets to the fuller end.

I imagine it would be logical to say that the answer lies there as the fixing gets done.

Wht not tell everyone they are doing stuff? We again I'm only guesing but I'd have to say the only people that will
be GREATLY put out are the higher users - most MumandDad users that duck in and out to check mail or do banking
aren't likely to be greatly affected - why draw their attention to it? And then there is the issue of whos a Paradise Cable and Who's a Paradise resold ADSlow customer.

Would you rather live in a world where there was No Cable at All? I know I wouldn't!! Imagine Racing around the Info super highway at 256 again? No thanks.

Look like Windows before it... Turn it off, turn it back on and PRESTO fixed. (most of the time)

Email is the most reliable way to contact the call centers, as they can then see a bit of a pattern.

not rocket science to say 10 people in a room Answering calls can't compare notes as they are dealing with stuff - Can't easily isolate an issue to a common fault (Like power outages)

and Technicians? Same for most companies, these guys are understaffed, sub-contractors that are DESPERATE to get more eople helping out.

Instead of starting a petition as to why TCL is a wee bit uncool (as it deals with all the people gettng off TelCon)
why not find constructive ways to spread the good word?

riahon

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#49010 19-Oct-2006 07:30

I agree that a petition to highlight the many problems that TellsomeonewhoCares is having is a little bit uncool. A petition asking why they stopped building infrastructure would be more beneficial as it will show that TellsomeonewhoCares are not only concerned about making $$$ but actually care about providing ~~Aussies~~ oops Kiwis that they really want to be a competitor rather than make profit for Aus.

Sorry - went OT, I might start that petition but then will TellsomeonewhoCares actualy care?

freitasm

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#49013 19-Oct-2006 08:54

MrMeargi: Email is the most reliable way to contact the call centers, as they can then see a bit of a pattern.

not rocket science to say 10 people in a room Answering calls can't compare notes as they are dealing with stuff - Can't easily isolate an issue to a common fault (Like power outages)

Hmmm. Not rocket science to have a computer-based system that detects patterns and show a visual warning when entering details of a new call.

freitasm

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#49021 19-Oct-2006 09:07

By the way

MrMeargi: I could loosley be called a"Lurker" one who has Ties to th ebig daddy company, ...
if you visit site like Howstuffworks.com it has some really great info On the difference between ADSlow and
CAble - and what happens when a Cable gets to the fuller end.
....

aren't likely to be greatly affected - why draw their attention to it? And then there is the issue of whos a Paradise Cable and Who's a Paradise resold ADSlow customer.

I should have said this before: welcome to Geekzone. Now that we are all friends here, skip the patronising. You will soon see that a lot of people here probably know more than you imagine. So no need for links to howstuffworks.com. Also the die hard geeks around here will know how to find the information.

Next, it's not ADSlow. It's ADSL. If you have ties to TelstraClear then this would be the first TCL trolling around here. And we don't give much credit to trolls. If you keep calling the competitor's services names, then you obviously can't give unbiased opinion and try to make TCL look good.

Back to the topic.

MrMeargi

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#49038 19-Oct-2006 11:28

I'm Genuinely sorry.

I feel very pasionately for TCL as I'm at the coal face. I see the ignorance some people have to what is being offered by other companies. those that don't even know what a Cable is.

When I started reading the posts about the service issue...... It's just Soo Frustrating. As one of the people TRYING SO HARD to get it right EVERY DAY, to come here and see people slating what I try so hard to do I got Defensive.

I love dropping in to Geek Zone when TCL announces a new product or service and

seeing hte excitement people have.

I Don't mean to Slate TCNZ's product, ADSL isn't just their product though - Its a service avaliable through their network.

When i draw attention to ADSL Vs Cable, thats what I mean - the companies suppling it are just that - suppliers.

TCNZ do some great things, and make good Money. TCL do offer some great products and have had some big service Issues too.

I don't deny it. I was just so frustrated - I did go on to read some threads further down and did feel a bit relieved whenI founds people talking about things going right.

And just a note, I didn't mean to seem condescending with my reference to HSW.com, it's simply another tool I use to research stuff that I don't know about.

I don't say I have al the answers.

The only other thing is to clarify the statement re Computers analysising... If a customer calls a center o frustration (call center) the operater is deaking with that acct, on their PC, - a new programme would need to be used to compare the source of calls to see if there is a common issue -
I don't believe that the company currently has the software - or even if it exsists, I agree it would be super helpful to have.
At least they are humans (eventually) and they are in New Zealand... nice to know.

Again I'd like to apologise if I have posted out side the rules, my frustrationis now under control.

sbiddle

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#49040 19-Oct-2006 11:38

MrMeargi:
I Don't mean to Slate TCNZ's product, ADSL isn't just their product though - Its a service avaliable through their network.
When i draw attention to ADSL Vs Cable, thats what I mean - the companies suppling it are just that - suppliers.

I believe TCL may actually have a few DSLAMS still hooked up to their Wellington network for internal use. ADSL can't be that bad! :-)

Bung

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#49051 19-Oct-2006 12:32

freitasm:
MrMeargi: Email is the most reliable way to contact the call centers, as they can then see a bit of a pattern.

not rocket science to say 10 people in a room Answering calls can't compare notes as they are dealing with stuff - Can't easily isolate an issue to a common fault (Like power outages)
Hmmm. Not rocket science to have a computer-based system that detects patterns and show a visual warning when entering details of a new call.

35 years ago analysing customer complaints for patterns that could be pinned down to common causes was a job often given to technician trainees in the Fault room. This was as record cards were replaced and they were just that, cardboard. It would be a shame if all the call centre computers were used for was analysing speed of answer and clearance.

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