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I posted this as a response to another comment, but I think it deserves a top level comment: I just want to chime in here to say: when I recently tried to purc

I posted this as a response to another comment, but I think it deserves a top level comment: I just want to chime in here to say: when I recently tried to purchase an iPhone SE from Telstra's online store, the device was out of stock. They couldn't tell me when they expected to have it back in stock, or it was being end-of-lifed. No straight answers. I spent 15 hours, over two weeks, on the phone to Telstra trying to get the order cancelled and my money back. I gave up with that. And went in to a Telstra owned Telstra store and politely but sternly demanded my money back by asking the managed to call his escalation point(s) until he found someone who could authorise the return of my money. After half an hour he was asking me to leave and I repeatedly said "not until I have my money back". I wasn't being threatening at all, rather I was pleading with him to understand my position. He picked up his mobile and said he was dialling the police. That's how Telstra treats it's customers. That's what Denholm is bring to the table: the worst customer experience in Australia with regard to telecommunications. That's not just my opinion, Telstra has repeatedly been voted as the worst customer telco related experience in Australia for decades.

spiderfarmer 8y ago
She was the CFO there not the CEO, how does this reflect on her performance?
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  She's signing off on paying for the delivery of incredibly bad customer service. Outsource everything to call centres where the agents have no authority to resolve an out of the ordinary issue and have difficulty escalating out of the ordinary issues to someone who can fix it. How does the operation of a business not reflect on the whole C-suite? Who else is responsible?
logicchains 8y ago
If you paid them and they refuse to deliver, couldn't you sue them for fraud?
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  I got the money back 16 days and 15+ hrs on the phone and one police threat later. Ultimately the amount of money we're talking about is trivial to me, but that's not the point. Telsa already has a bad reputation for after sales support and spare parts. They're not doing themselves any favours here.
arrrg 8y ago
If people are in the store I’m responsible for and they blackmail me I would call security or the police, too. That‘s unacceptable behavior. I understand your frustration, and it really sucks that Telstra put you into that situation, but that doesn’t make your behavior ok and excuse abuse of employees.
- rogerhoward 8y ago
  Define blackmail.
- mfjordvald 8y ago
  This is not abuse of employees, this is abuse of customers.
- laumars 8y ago
  Who said anything about blackmail or abuse of employees? The GP said he asked to speak to a manager and, I quote, "wasn't being threatening at all." I don't see an issue with refusing to leave a store when you're denied a refund you're legally owed. That's literally the least threatening form of protest one can make.
  - threeseed 8y ago
    Except that for many companies e.g. Apple, Telstra the retail stores are not the same legal entity as the company who owes you the money. Telstra's retail structure for example is mostly franchise. So you may as well just go to McDonalds and ask them for a refund.
    - laumars 8y ago
      I understand your point however the GP did say he went to a Telstra owned store.
  - obstacle1 8y ago
    >I don't see an issue with refusing to leave a store when you're denied a refund you're legally owed. The issue is you are literally trespassing at that point. It is illegal, you are committing a crime. You can't take the law into your own hands. If you are "legally owed" a refund, you can take that to court, prove it, and receive judgment for your refund. What you cannot do is judge for yourself that you are legally owed a refund and therefore entitled to stay in a retail store regardless of whether or not you are wanted there. That is not a protest, it is just exhibiting a shocking lack of self-awareness and -- trespassing.
deytempo 8y ago
You should have waited for the police to arrive and stated your case. A friend had a similar thing happen in a case of demanding rent from a ex room mate while I was with them. They threatened to call the police. I said go ahead. There was another witness present by myself so it wasn’t like they could claim falsely that my friend had done anything wrong. When the police arrived, I explained to them the situation and they told me my friend would not be able to demand the money then and there but asked to see the paperwork and once verified, explained to us the process for legally squeezing the money out of the room mate right in front of them. Needless to say, that shut the ex roomie up and they scraped together their share of rent within a week. Police will usually side with the law and they generally don’t like watching people get taken advantage of.
threeseed 8y ago
I've worked at Telstra so can shed some light on this. 1. Harassing retail staff for what is a corporate process problem is really inappropriate and pointless. I'm not surprised they called the police. Instead you should have called the TIO, ACCC or escalated via email. 2. The customer service issues at Telstra are incredibly deep and complex. It's a 40+ year old company where some of the processes still rely on dot matrix printers and faxes and there are thousands of IT systems. It's a mess. Call centres within Australia would do nothing to change the NPS which is why they were so easy to off-shore in the first place. 3. Telstra may not have a great customer service reputation. But they are one of the most revered telcos globally. They transitioned to 4G better than anyone and had the fastest network on the planet for quite some time. And they will do it again with 5G. 4. Denholm isn't hired to run customer service for Tesla. She was the CFO of a 40,000 odd employee highly technical, multi-faceted company e.g. their own venture fund. She also spent 7 years at Toyota so she has some automative experience as well as strong technical background.
- bicubic 8y ago
  > Harassing retail staff for what is a corporate process problem is really inappropriate and pointless It's a natural human reaction. If you build a system that treats customers like shit, they will take it out on your front line staff. It's not because they're bad people, it's because you designed a business that treats customers like shit. It is not exactly surprising that a customer will not be polite to front line staff after wasting 4+ hours getting bounced around various useless departments on the phone beforehand. The blame lies on management, not on customers.
- esotericn 8y ago
  In what sense is asking someone to call their manager "harassment"? If I call a customer service line and ask to escalate (because the bottom tier staff are useless and can only click the same buttons in a UI as I can anyway) is that harassment? Why is it harassment for a customer to use the time of a company's employees (whilst they're on the clock), but not for a company to use the time of a customer for no reason at all, as a dark pattern to prevent customers from obtaining recourse? A refund should be a simple matter. Cancel order, send payment, done. Without 50,000 levels of bureaucracy involved, in the UK it could be done via Faster Payments in one second.
Angostura 8y ago
> That's what Denholm is bring to the table: the worst customer experience in Australia with regard to telecommunications Being charitable, its possible that the reason she was there for less than 2 years was that she disliked the culture and found herself unable to change it.
tehlike 8y ago
At least this is rather straight to fix in the us. Not related to the post itself, but in the us you just resolve the issue with your credit card company by filing a dispute.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  I did this too. I was advised estimated time to resolve if successful is forty days and dependent on the other party agreeing they’ve made a mistake.
  - tehlike 8y ago
    For disputes, the onus is on the merchant to prove they did not make a mistake.

spiderfarmer 8y ago

She was the CFO there not the CEO, how does this reflect on her performance?

TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
She's signing off on paying for the delivery of incredibly bad customer service. Outsource everything to call centres where the agents have no authority to resolve an out of the ordinary issue and have difficulty escalating out of the ordinary issues to someone who can fix it. How does the operation of a business not reflect on the whole C-suite? Who else is responsible?

logicchains 8y ago

If you paid them and they refuse to deliver, couldn't you sue them for fraud?

TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
I got the money back 16 days and 15+ hrs on the phone and one police threat later. Ultimately the amount of money we're talking about is trivial to me, but that's not the point. Telsa already has a bad reputation for after sales support and spare parts. They're not doing themselves any favours here.

arrrg 8y ago

If people are in the store I’m responsible for and they blackmail me I would call security or the police, too. That‘s unacceptable behavior. I understand your frustration, and it really sucks that Telstra put you into that situation, but that doesn’t make your behavior ok and excuse abuse of employees.

rogerhoward 8y ago
Define blackmail.
mfjordvald 8y ago
This is not abuse of employees, this is abuse of customers.
laumars 8y ago
Who said anything about blackmail or abuse of employees? The GP said he asked to speak to a manager and, I quote, "wasn't being threatening at all." I don't see an issue with refusing to leave a store when you're denied a refund you're legally owed. That's literally the least threatening form of protest one can make.
- threeseed 8y ago
  Except that for many companies e.g. Apple, Telstra the retail stores are not the same legal entity as the company who owes you the money. Telstra's retail structure for example is mostly franchise. So you may as well just go to McDonalds and ask them for a refund.
  - laumars 8y ago
    I understand your point however the GP did say he went to a Telstra owned store.
- obstacle1 8y ago
  >I don't see an issue with refusing to leave a store when you're denied a refund you're legally owed. The issue is you are literally trespassing at that point. It is illegal, you are committing a crime. You can't take the law into your own hands. If you are "legally owed" a refund, you can take that to court, prove it, and receive judgment for your refund. What you cannot do is judge for yourself that you are legally owed a refund and therefore entitled to stay in a retail store regardless of whether or not you are wanted there. That is not a protest, it is just exhibiting a shocking lack of self-awareness and -- trespassing.

deytempo 8y ago

You should have waited for the police to arrive and stated your case. A friend had a similar thing happen in a case of demanding rent from a ex room mate while I was with them. They threatened to call the police. I said go ahead. There was another witness present by myself so it wasn’t like they could claim falsely that my friend had done anything wrong. When the police arrived, I explained to them the situation and they told me my friend would not be able to demand the money then and there but asked to see the paperwork and once verified, explained to us the process for legally squeezing the money out of the room mate right in front of them. Needless to say, that shut the ex roomie up and they scraped together their share of rent within a week. Police will usually side with the law and they generally don’t like watching people get taken advantage of.

threeseed 8y ago

I've worked at Telstra so can shed some light on this. 1. Harassing retail staff for what is a corporate process problem is really inappropriate and pointless. I'm not surprised they called the police. Instead you should have called the TIO, ACCC or escalated via email. 2. The customer service issues at Telstra are incredibly deep and complex. It's a 40+ year old company where some of the processes still rely on dot matrix printers and faxes and there are thousands of IT systems. It's a mess. Call centres within Australia would do nothing to change the NPS which is why they were so easy to off-shore in the first place. 3. Telstra may not have a great customer service reputation. But they are one of the most revered telcos globally. They transitioned to 4G better than anyone and had the fastest network on the planet for quite some time. And they will do it again with 5G. 4. Denholm isn't hired to run customer service for Tesla. She was the CFO of a 40,000 odd employee highly technical, multi-faceted company e.g. their own venture fund. She also spent 7 years at Toyota so she has some automative experience as well as strong technical background.

bicubic 8y ago
> Harassing retail staff for what is a corporate process problem is really inappropriate and pointless It's a natural human reaction. If you build a system that treats customers like shit, they will take it out on your front line staff. It's not because they're bad people, it's because you designed a business that treats customers like shit. It is not exactly surprising that a customer will not be polite to front line staff after wasting 4+ hours getting bounced around various useless departments on the phone beforehand. The blame lies on management, not on customers.
esotericn 8y ago
In what sense is asking someone to call their manager "harassment"? If I call a customer service line and ask to escalate (because the bottom tier staff are useless and can only click the same buttons in a UI as I can anyway) is that harassment? Why is it harassment for a customer to use the time of a company's employees (whilst they're on the clock), but not for a company to use the time of a customer for no reason at all, as a dark pattern to prevent customers from obtaining recourse? A refund should be a simple matter. Cancel order, send payment, done. Without 50,000 levels of bureaucracy involved, in the UK it could be done via Faster Payments in one second.

Angostura 8y ago

> That's what Denholm is bring to the table: the worst customer experience in Australia with regard to telecommunications Being charitable, its possible that the reason she was there for less than 2 years was that she disliked the culture and found herself unable to change it.

tehlike 8y ago

At least this is rather straight to fix in the us. Not related to the post itself, but in the us you just resolve the issue with your credit card company by filing a dispute.

TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
I did this too. I was advised estimated time to resolve if successful is forty days and dependent on the other party agreeing they’ve made a mistake.
- tehlike 8y ago
  For disputes, the onus is on the merchant to prove they did not make a mistake.