National Customer Relationship Team (Australia)
Attn. Fiona Hayes
Telstra Corporation Limited
Locked Bag 4760
Melbourne VIC 3001

Dear Fiona Hayes,

Reference: CIDN 2004779785

Thank you for your letter dated Monday April 12, 2010 in which you report company-wide improvements to your handling of complaints.  I am responding to you because I want to quell any assumption, should it exist, that “resolved” at your end implies satisfaction at mine.

My complaint only appears resolved to you out of my own abandonment.  It wasn’t; I simply had no more time or energy to devote to the cause despite the TIO’s involvement in the process.  I gave up after what felt like yet another brush-off with no genuine interest in the customer’s best interests or even what they had to say.

If you have access to the details of my complaint—which I find unlikely given Telstra’s alleged policies for archived material—those details may verify that I had enumerated on multiple occasions a short set of very specific, simple concerns (maybe five in total), one of which regarded my potential referral to a debt collection agency over failure to pay for a service that I had never requested or even received.

I made very clear what information I wanted and how I would consider the complaint resolved.  I ensured that my concerns could be answered simply, in bullet points like I had presented them.  I can only conclude however that the officers responsible for handling my complaint either were completely disinterested in what actually concerned me, or were following rules from above along the lines of, “don’t address anything directly.  Refuse to look at records older than a few months.  Throw money at the customer in the form of credit until they shut up.  For the love of all that is sacred, don’t listen and don’t admit fault to anything.”

I still don’t know if Telstra referred me to a debt collection agency over their errors and hence impacted my credit rating.  I will probably never know until my next request for finance is rejected or something like that.  I admit that I don’t know how that stuff works but I’m sure that a company of Telstra’s presence could certainly do damage to an individual’s reputation in the money-lending world.

Please know and try to understand from my perspective that while I appreciate your gesture, I hold little faith in Telstra’s improvement of complaints handling.  I don’t expect that you have seen my complaint, I don’t expect that you will, and I would be very surprised to receive a personal response to this letter from you indicating that you have read and absorbed it.

I am grossly disappointed in Telstra as a business; the image that this company portrays to me after my every experience with it is one of money-grubbing arrogance.  Quite frankly I find supporting such a business embarrassing, and the HomeLine® Budget plan I worked so hard and for so long to obtain is the last Telstra service I will ever seek.

I am sorry that you, Fiona, are the one who (I expect) personally has to deal with this letter.  It is my hope however that all customers in my position are voicing their dissatisfaction so that you can obtain an accurate picture of the true effectiveness and outcomes of your company’s complaint resolution processes.

Best wishes,
Alex Peters