You need to apply for the $3 credit
May 28th, 2006 at 2:39 pm by David FarrarMost people know about the Xtra outages which lasted for three to four days. They have said there will be a 4 day credit, which is equal to around $3.50 for most Xtra users.
Now a friend has just shown me the e-mail from Xtra which says you have to fill in an online form and apply for the refund!!!
Now time is money, and people will not want to spend ten minutes finding their phone bill, and copying over the exact account holder name, the account number, plus phone and e-mail just to get back less than $4.
Surely Telecom could just apply the refund to all broadband accounts, or even as a compromise allow people to apply for it with just their username and password (which you don’t need to look up generally).
This is just going to offend more of their own customers I suspect.
Tags: Internet
May 28th, 2006 at 3:06 pm
Pissed me off for one.Whats a stupid shortsighted thing to do…are we sure Telecom isn’t still being run by the state…?
Vote:May 28th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
That’s just outrageous, especially after Kelly Moore, Telecom’s customer care manager said Xtra customers don’t need to do anything at all.
Linked to your post on my blog:
http://www.geekzone.co.nz/juha/594
Vote:May 28th, 2006 at 4:35 pm
So why call them ‘Telecom’. More likely name is ‘Tele$cam’
Vote:May 28th, 2006 at 4:36 pm
So why call them ‘Telecom’. More likely name is ‘Tele$cam’
Vote:May 28th, 2006 at 5:15 pm
Its an exaggeration to say it will take 10 min to get the information together. 30 sec to walk downstairs to get the bill. 30 sec to do the transaction. These are actual times not guesses!
Sure Telecom is hoping that ,say third wont bother to apply for their refund ( remember DPF says at other times the shareholders allways come first second third at public companies) but having done it, it does focus your mind on they are offering something for the problems. If it was automatic would you remember they are giving a credit?
Remember it could be worse, the airline shown on TV, easyjet says you need photo id to board, but it could be worse, ryanair is in a category all of its own
Vote:May 28th, 2006 at 5:37 pm
Sorry I don’t get the similarities between Easyjet and Tele$cam – with one you fly by the seat of your pants but the other takes yer pants off before you’re even flying.
Vote:May 28th, 2006 at 8:57 pm
I too received an email from Xtra. It included a link to a webpage that was asking for personal information that Xtra must already know about me since they provide a service and bill me for it.
This email looks exactly like a phishing attempt and by comparing it to a phishing email as described by Xtra, it conforms exactly.
Now we know that Xtra are trying to do a combination of the following:
1. Hope that a large percentage of people don’t fill in the form or get it wrong (saving $).
2. See the email, are paranoid about it being a phishing email and either do nothing or contact their helpdesk (there is a 25+ min delay this evening)
3. Blindly follow the link, fill in the info and are happily trained to fall for other phishing emails. After all, if Xtra can ask for personal info, why are emails apparently from your bank not genuine too?
Looking at the email headers, the message isn’t even really from Xtra, but from aimiis.proximityid.com.
This again is a strong indicator if a phishing attempt, but more likely, Xtra can’t even handle doing a refund themselves and need to get a third party to handle it (as well as collecting your personal info).
I think this a very serious matter and should be raised with the NZ Ministry of Consumer Affairs.
Vote:May 28th, 2006 at 11:36 pm
David – Telecoms recent outages effected Ihug users as well. Was there another outage that this payment is covering?
Do you know if they will be offering refunds to users of other ISP’s that were affected by these outages or just Xtra customers?
Cheers Mark
Vote:May 29th, 2006 at 5:57 am
Of course what Telecom is probably doing is pointing out the huge administrative cost to them in providing such a trivial refund.
What the real problem is that they are only giving a refund for the service missed – not for the impact of the service missed which is much higher.
Not that this is any different to SKY when I used to have it. Only had it to watch one match a week (Warriors) – and never managed to watch a whole game without some kind of service interruption. Never got ANY refund despite it effectively being a disruption of 1/4 the service I was actually paying for.
Vote:May 29th, 2006 at 6:13 am
MarkJ – I don’t know for sure but I would suggest that the answer would be no. Your contract is with Ihug so you would need to get a refund from them. Ihug may then have a service contract that they can use to recover their costs – and if not that would be their concern?
Vote:May 29th, 2006 at 6:42 am
I’m with Ihug and never had any problems so if they did affect non Xtra ISPs it must have been minimal.
Generally Telecom will never refund ISPs money unless legally obliged to. In fact many of their services are specifically on a best endeavour basis and if you want a service level agreement with them, it can triple the cost!
Vote:May 29th, 2006 at 8:13 am
I had just left xtra, so I was lucky. I was extremely pissed off with their announcement that they would stop providing a news feed. Found iconz, they had a better deal for me with higher upload speeds. Finally some decent webcam interaction with the family overseas.
Vote:May 29th, 2006 at 10:40 am
“Generally Telecom will never refund ISPs money unless legally obliged to”
David – that is hardly unique to Telecom, here or elsewhere. My point was that Mark’s claim is with the person who he has the contract with – he has no claim against Telecom. Whether Ihug does or doesn’t is their issue, not Marks.
Of course a higher service level brings a higher cost – it is the same for my company too.
Vote:Are you able to get compensation for downtime caused by WinXP bluescreening?
May 30th, 2006 at 3:49 pm
Xtra has also been blacklisted by AOL and Compuserve. What a pain in the @#$%.
Vote:December 10th, 2006 at 10:53 am
http://baltons0.50webs.com/cheap/last-minute-flight-tickets-providenciales.html
Vote: