John Linton .....the result of on line publications removing revenue from sales of printed versions and the consequent 'belt tightening' - reduction in journalists and standards required? I read five or six newspapers (or at least scan their business and tech sections each day) but only pay for a print version of the Sydney Morning Herald in recognition that I don't want the SMH to disappear or to be forced to drop its standards even more than it already has because more and more people don't pay for a print version and therefore its revenue from that process and the associated advertising revenue continue to decline. Although I do pay for access to the Wall Street Journal I read four other 'foreign' papers free and more than a dozen tech on line publications on line without paying for them.
So is this what you get when news publications no longer have journalists with an education or an IQ above their shoe size:
http://www.smh.com.au/business/telcos-set-to-reconnect-to-customers-20110521-1extj.html
For this dummy to accept any of the "facts" he uses to put together this piece of nonsense is mind blowingly simple minded but to then simply print statements showing that the person giving him the "facts" is contradicting himself within the same sentence is just plain moronic. However that isn't really the point. The real point is that technical services of quite significant complexity (and that require the end user to connect to those services via equipment that they own, and even more to the point, set up and fiddle with themselves,) cannot be compared with some dummy querying the charges on his bank or credit card statement. The fact that the 'complaints' processed by the TIO are generated in a completely non-sensical way simply destroys any vestigial credibility to this meaningless piece of nonsense posing as rational journalism.
Let me state that by writing the above words I am not, in any way, suggesting that the "problem resolution processes" deployed by many large and small and every size in between communications service providers in Australia are 'perfect' (they are far from that in many instances). What I am saying is that using any false information from the TIO to justify anything is just the sheerest nonsense. However all of that is beside the point. A rational person would look at the situation in very different ways - principally differentiating the ways technical services are provided to end users who are significantly involved in the quality of service they receive and how a majority of users of technical services have an overwhelming desire to pay as little as possible for receiving those services.
For as long as communications services are bought by the "average Australian" it must be obvious that a significant number of users of complex services are not going to have the skills or knowledge to sensibly trouble shoot problems that they may encounter from time to time in using such services. They will pick up viruses from time to time; their hardware and cables will become unreliable and eventually unusable - although "I haven't touched anything"; their children/co-users will fiddle with complex settings and render their connections unusable - etc, etc. To drive a car you need a license - to operate a much more complex (if not anything like as publicly lethal) device you need nothing but the ability to pay for it. So any incompetent fool can buy a complex router/modem/ATA/wifi device without having a clue how it operates and can then blame any subsequent mishap on a completely different commercial entity. Problems with CPE account for around 90% of all "service problems" Exetel encounters - and I doubt the statistics are very different for any other Australian comms provider.
There is, however, an issue with "customer satisfaction" in the resolution of "problems" with complex technical services that will never be addressed by any current or new enquiry into anything. You will never be able to educate the "average buyer" to the technical expertise level required to use communications services without problems and the providers will never be able to afford to hire and retain enough qualified technical staff to deal with such customers. As price 'demands' by technical services customers continue to escalate to the point where 'free' is the only basis for their purchase - the apochryphal 'Freddy' could tell you what will happen in the future.
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