Getting it done ‘right’

It seems lately (and last year), that there are some people in this world that can’t seem to do much right at all. I’m not about to hassle everyone on a single mistake, hey, they happen, I make mistakes, others do too. That’s all well and good. It’s when they are made continuously, from a business, that it becomes less of a mistake, and more of a ‘problem’.

I’ve been with a few ISPs, and I’ve had generally good experiences with all of them (generally).

I’ve dealt with Telstra Bigpond, they were expensive, had indian call centre staff, but Cable internet was worth it (10Mbps!). I’ve also been with iiNet (the younger, friendly iiNet), and the service from them was good. I wasn’t the account holder of an OzEmail account, but it was pretty reliable, and as far as I know, pretty much trouble free.

I also had a account with iiNet after they swallowed OzEmail and other ISPs, and released ADSL2+ (early 2006), and the net connection was stable, but the staff themselves in the call centre were very much troublesome. Each time we had to make a change, they’d stuff it up one way or another (or 20).

We then moved from iiNet, after it became evident that signing up with them to boost numbers for them to install ADSL2+, as they had lead customers to believe, wasn’t going to happen, so we simply jumped ship to Netspace, who were great, they answered an email sent the night before, the very next day. Sign up was a breeze. Never had to call customer service much at all, except for 1 call, to discuss an outage. Then the new plans from Netspace were released (and they suck). The connection is reliable, without hassles really. After the release of the new plans though, experiences with Netspace have gone downhill:

1. Double debiting account twice for a monthly fee, then requiring proof of a dishonour fee, to try and get them to credit us for it (still pending).
2. Arranging a move causes them to extend contract 6 months.
3. The system they have doesn’t allow a customer to keep same plan when moving (despite being allowed).
4. The phone system has 4 or 5 options to reach a consultant, After 2 I’m generally annoyed at having to choose options – I called, I want to speak to someone.
5. The hold music is old, repetitive, and boring.
6. Queue times are in excess of 40 minutes for customer service, despite sales answering customer service queries in 10 minutes.
7. Emails sent to Netspace don’t seem to get read, you get an automated reply, and there is no response thereafter.
8. My move, when I wanted to keep same plan was stuffed up by someone, who put through the order as 512/512, instead of 1500/256.

– Those stuff ups must be costing Netspace money and customers. Why can’t they simply do things right from the word go? I know it costs them to change line speed, and if it was done correctly in the first place, they’d probably have slightly fatter profits, or a reduced plan fee.

Just like the banking debit stuff up they did, that’s going to cost them a pretty 30 odd dollars, funds that could of probably been better spent reducing new plan costs, or putting in the ADSL2+ DSLAM fund to expand a single ADSL2+ network and give them a unique playing field.

To top that mistakes list off, I’m only one customer. If they have 30000 customers, all debited incorrectly, and all charged dishonour fees of $35, they’d be out of pocket $1,050,000. That’s a lot of money down the drain due to a slip up. Or the same applies with line speed stuff ups, Telstra charges in the 20 – 30 ball park to change speed, so that’s a pretty instant $600,000. That would be better spent on backhaul, or DSLAMs, or more staff.

Of course, the above figures are saying for 30,000 customers, realistically, it’d be around 5,000 or so customers that face problems with stuff ups (or get charged fees and don’t notice it, etc).

I get the impression that the ISPs are desperate for staff in some cases, and they don’t really care if they are incompetent, as long as someone shuts that F&@king phone up, they are happy. That’s not too bad, but the customers will want a good experience, and certainly, they will get it, even if it means moving elsewhere.