John Linton
......or am I just developing manic paranoia?
I don't have a wide knowledge of how other people deal with "left field" occurrences in their business lives but I've always thought of myself as a pretty resilient and adaptable person who deals with business life's little strange problems and occurrences with pretty much of a 'shrug the metaphorical shoulders and move on' attitude.
It occurred to me this morning that either I am becoming paranoid or the incidence of "wow, I didn't see that coming" incidences are becoming more and more frequent.....and by this I'm referring to events/happenings that you just don't even think you should think about.
One of the things I definitely don't think about is Exetel's financial reputation or Annette's and my personal financial reputation with our bank of 30 years as customers. This isn't self delusion it's a fact that we have enjoyed a 'perfect' financial standing with our bank for three decades and their latest 'personal asset minus liability statement' continued to show a positive in 8 figures for us personally and their Exetel company details are equally as exemplary. I had, until last Friday, never checked Exetel's credit reference report as I knew that Exetel had always paid every creditor's bill in full and mostly before time for the whole of the 15 years of Exetel's trading existence (as well as submitting and paying all tax returns, payroll tax returns, superannuation contributions, company with holding taxes and PAYG taxes in full and on time). We did/do this not because we are exemplary citizens but because it's essential for our start up business not to have any negatives associated with our financial dealings.
I would have had no reason to believe that Exetel's and its directors credit standing was anything but as perfect as it could possibly be and had/has always been that way.
So I was surprised/shocked/alarmed/devastated for Annette to tell me that our bank of thirty years had declined to issue Exetel with a $2,000.00 limit company credit card to allow our Financial Controller to pay for minor cash purchases without asking our employees, him or me to use our personal credit cards to buy such items. This is a bank who charges us quite significant fees on the $A4 million + we put through the Exetel account each month and knows that we have never run an overdraft and together with our personal assets never has less than control over more than $A10 million of our real estate, shares and cash.
To say I was shocked/jolted/lost for words would be an understatement.
The reason given by some junior clerk at Westpac was that Exetel's credit report showed that we had three defaults (for trivial sums of money totaling to a sum of less than $A700.00) registered by Telstra Retail on our VEDA listing. So we had managed to trade for 15 years on an account that was 'pristine' (no notices of default/disputed payment/legal actions/etc) and have turned over more than $A150 million over that time yet our credit rating is destroyed by a company (who happens to be a competitor) with whom we have never dealt and have no agreements, contracts or any other relationship with.
God knows how many potential large customers and suppliers have looked at that report since Telstra Retail illegally placed those defaults on the report and subsequently decided not to do business with Exetel (certainly our bank made that decision). In terms of damaging Exetel's ability to do business, or even survive in business, the damage by that/those action(s) could be immense. Telstra Retail's actions appear to me to be in complete breach of the ACMA code C540_2007-1 apart from anything else - but of course my legal knowledge is miniscule.
I will deal with this situation via our solicitors today.
You may ask why I, someone else at Exetel, was not aware that Telstra Retail had besmirched Exetel's reputation in such a devastating way? The answer is very simple. We had no reason to ever look at our own credit report because we knew we had never defaulted on any payment in the whole of our trading existence (as the report shows for fifteen years).
So is business now becoming so complicated and convoluted that a prudent person should check every last possible thing they can think up to verify that nothing untoward is happening?
Does Telstra really set out to damage all 'competitors' in any way possible and then, when challenged, simply make it impossible for as long as possible for the damaged party to correct the terribly damaging results of their actions?
Or is my belief that is the case just a sure sign of my irrecoverable paranoia?
PS: A few moments ago (2.00 pm Tuesday 10th February 2009) we received an email from Telstra stating that they would arrange for the default notices to be removed from Exetel's VEDA credit report