Cold call from Spirit - Telecom wholesale division

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#728597 7-Dec-2012 14:58

freitasm: Ah, but bashing Telecom is so much better than actually pointing fingers in the right direction ;)

And by the way, Yellow Page is not a Telecom company either.

If only Telecom HADN'T built the Southern Cross Cable, and by it's good grace came via New Zealand... What a different landscape we would be in now had that not happened.... And from the sounds of it, the only reason why it happened in the first place was a few smart folks in Telecom pushing extremely hard to make it happen...

Just imagine that world..... Oh no wait.. lets go on bashing Telecom.

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#728609 7-Dec-2012 15:14

Exactly...

Righ

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#728814 7-Dec-2012 23:50

Just to try to get this back on topic, the cold calls from Spirit Telco....

I agree with both sides here. It is simultaneously true that:

having resellers (or even non-NZ/Au call centre marketers) who are not Telecom employees (or Telstra here in Oz), does make it easier for other companies to pass themselves off as Telecom; and
this behaviour would happen to some extent without resellers or offshore call centers.

The question is more what you should do about both, because both damage their brands. Telstra used to pursue telecommunication marketers passing themselves off as Telstra, as this case study illustrates...

In 2006 a company called Orion Telecommunications was sued by Telstra for misrepresenting itself as Telstra. The Telstra Legal Counsel's comments when the case was settled in Telstra's favour are worth quoting:

"Telstra group legal counsel Will Irving said: "Telstra, which does not operate overseas call centres, was extremely concerned at this company's methods and in particular claims that it was associated with Telstra."These types of calls can confuse customers as the callers imply they are working with or part of Telstra, when they are not, or are simply providing services over Telstra lines."The court action was defended by Orion, but the Hobart business was forced to give undertakings to the court, including sending senior executives to all of its overseas call centres to ensure staff did not claim to be associated with Telstra.Orion will also undertake staff retraining, keep recordings between staff and customers for 20 days and maintain and comply with a "do not call" list." (my emphasis)

Since late 2006, Telstra has operated overseas call centres, and has recently accelerated this. I'm not opposed to overseas call centres, as well run, they can be both cheaper and more effective - eg. give better out of hours coverage. However, Telstra centres have struggled for service quality. But, they can still be great for price sensitive customers such as students who don't care/don't need service and just want cheap access.

Telstra knew, (see emphasised text above), that customers can easily confuse resellers with wholesaler/retailers like itself, thus diluting its brand, and, as Will implies above (first emphasised text) that by only operating local call centres, it can help to automatically alert its customers to legal or illegal marketers from competitors. Nevertheless, Telstra's strategy has appeared to have been to go offshore and to abandon litigating competitors "passing off" as Telstra. Like Telecom NZ, Government gave it no choice but to supply resellers, but it could have differentiated itself from them, but chose not to. I suspect that the short term savings in costs to boost profits, have been offset by long term lower revenues from lost customers.

You may know, that all telecoms companies in Australia are about to become "resellers" for the Government owned NBN Co. Telstra faces a future where without its copper network as system default, the only way it can differentiate itself is by service. Perhaps, like Telecom NZ with Spirit Telco, it should hit back at those "passing off" its brand, and first class service by people with Oz accents, despite the cost, might be part of the solution.

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#728857 8-Dec-2012 09:01

These scammers are no different than those calling people at home and telling "I work for Microsoft and your PC is infected. Let me take control of it and for a small fee we can fix it for you."

Telecom should put some of their legal team on the case and get these companies to stop using their name, or get them paying fines any time someone is slammed after a scam call like these.

Money flowing out of these scammers pocket will make them stop.

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#728884 8-Dec-2012 09:49

freitasm: These scammers are no different than those calling people at home and telling "I work for Microsoft and your PC is infected. Let me take control of it and for a small fee we can fix it for you."

Telecom should put some of their legal team on the case and get these companies to stop using their name, or get them paying fines any time someone is slammed after a scam call like these.

Money flowing out of these scammers pocket will make them stop.

Telecom already have. When escalating to slamming@telecom email address that goes directly to an escalation team that have direct contact with legal who are well aware of this issue.

This is something Telecom take very seriously in regards to the excellent reputation we have in New Zealand.

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#728887 8-Dec-2012 09:53

I hope Telecom NZ nail this company

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#728913 8-Dec-2012 11:11

Good. keep nailing these idiots.

The problem with slam is that unsuspecting customers don't know they were slammed until they try to use some feature that is not working anymore. Then when they contact a telco, they aren't allowed to tell the customer what other telco slammed the account.

Really bad situation all around. This needs to change and be more transparent - not Telecom's fault, it happens with all telcos actually.

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#730940 11-Dec-2012 22:51

Thank goodness for geeks!

This evening, I received a call from Spirit something-thing-a-rather, with frequent use of the word Telecom and a lot of other confusing explanation. The man had a thick Indian accent which I thought was odd for a person who should be clearly explaining their offer. He got a bit flustered when I said I didn't understand who he was or what he was offering. Then I told him I was happy with my telecommunications provider - he assured me that nothing would change, just the phone bills would be smaller and from Spirit ### rather than from Telecom. Then he tried to explain the deal again and asked if that was alright with me? Ah, no - I don't make decisions like that over the phone. He said he would call back and speak to my husband, who I said would also not change providers over the phone. I decided to google and see if I could find out who they were before my husband receives a callback from them. Thanks to you guys, I can tell him to just hang-up because it's a scam as shifty as it sounds.
I did wonder though - is it possible that we've been 'slammed' (never heard that term before), even though I didn't agree to anything?
Jac

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#730947 11-Dec-2012 23:03

jacm: Thank goodness for geeks!
This evening, I received a call from Spirit something-thing-a-rather, with frequent use of the word Telecom and a lot of other confusing explanation. The man had a thick Indian accent which I thought was odd for a person who should be clearly explaining their offer. He got a bit flustered when I said I didn't understand who he was or what he was offering. Then I told him I was happy with my telecommunications provider - he assured me that nothing would change, just the phone bills would be smaller and from Spirit ### rather than from Telecom. Then he tried to explain the deal again and asked if that was alright with me? Ah, no - I don't make decisions like that over the phone. He said he would call back and speak to my husband, who I said would also not change providers over the phone. I decided to google and see if I could find out who they were before my husband receives a callback from them. Thanks to you guys, I can tell him to just hang-up because it's a scam as shifty as it sounds.
I did wonder though - is it possible that we've been 'slammed' (never heard that term before), even though I didn't agree to anything?
Jac

Based on how the call went I doubt it. I think they need things like your account details before they can do this though?

Speedtest 2019-10-14

freitasm

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#753326 30-Jan-2013 15:37

I see these guys are on the prowl again...

Skee

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#753340 30-Jan-2013 15:59

When you say "Call data" (in the TelstraClear forum post) - what do you mean?

Are they trying to tell you your toll call history etc without actually knowing?

craft1

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#755685 4-Feb-2013 17:27

Just got a call from them tonight. He started by mentioning Chorus alot and when I questioned repeatedly how he got my details he finally explained he got them online via a telecom directory (hence he had the wrong name). It sounded like he was in the middle of a food court with all the noise in the background and seemed shocked when I told him I wasn't interested. I lost count of the times he mentioned that nothing would change except a smaller bill. He even managed to tell me that three times before he even heard how much I currently pay.

Way too pushy, not sure how many people he gets with that "TAKE MY OFFER ASAP" approach.

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#762260 14-Feb-2013 13:37

I had a call from the over the weekend - same story, thick Indian accent, used the word Telecom frequently, implied he was from Telecom and could lower my bills. I told him to get lost.

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#762262 14-Feb-2013 13:38

Yes, they are back. Just locked another thread and pointed the OP to this one.

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#762275 14-Feb-2013 13:44

I must give my mum a call & give her a heads-up. She's already pretty good with the fake virus phone calls.
I wonder if people in legit call centres who have noticeable accents get significantly more hang-ups and abuse than they used to because of all these scammers? I don't want to sound like an NZ First MP, but I tend to hang up on callers with accents now, I've probably missed out on multiple offers from Sky and the Herald, not to mention the polling people (oh darn).

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