Here's an interesting customer experience from Christchurch.
Willie (surname withheld but I declare a personal connection) owns a business that has several mobiles and has been a loyal customer of Telecom since the beginning.
Willie has one very specific requirement. He doesn't want cellular voice mail. If he's on the line he wants callers to get the old fashioned "engaged" tone. (Remember it?)
His logic is fair enough - with "engaged" I ring you, get "engaged", and call you back later - total cost is 1 call. With Voicemail I leave you a message, you clear it, you call me back - total cost is 3 calls. That kind of logic is why Willie’s rich enough to shout me whisky.
So here's his story of recent dealings:
"Vodafone approach us to swap over our contract, offer $5800 plus hardware to change.
Approach Telecom and told by all 3 shops (Orb, Total, Leading Edge) I can’t have the engaged tone on the new XT
Decide to play Sherlock Holmes so ring Telecom help desk and finally get Karl who is concerned that Telecom are going to loose a 22 year old Mobile customer - Karl does some research and comes back with a YES.
I ask Karl to arrange new phones - but he tells me he can’t deal with customers I have to go to a Retail Store. (Orb, Total, Leading)
I decide that with all the work I have done I would ask as compensation for 2 extra phones for the kids to be connected to XT, but this is too much for Telecom
Cant do that, they say - so I have been told to change to Vodafone. (This info took a while to get through because XT was down)
It is beyond belief that a communication co. can not be communicated with and is happy to let their customers leave."
It looks like Telecom's loss and Vodafone's gain at this stage. TUANZ is happy to feed back any counter offers to Willie.