John Linton
....the actual legislation and constitution ensure that it can never operate effectively or get remotely close to what it is required by its own constitution to do....it's simply a 'work for the dole' program gone feral.
Looks like the weather bureau has got it mostly right with its forecast for Sydney today with gray skies and continual rain showers where we are....the sort of very dull day that combined with yesterday's Christmas lunch and an over indulgence in alcohol didn't promote the thought of early rising and up and at it allowing the luxury of a late start to the day. Presumably that is causing more people to hunch over their computers and write to me rather than enjoying their break in the sun. I mentioned in a previous musing that Exetel had decided to take legal action against the TIO because of their total failure to act under the terms and conditions of their constitution and when this had been brought to their attention they just dismissed the claims by crediting the charges made on the examples provided with no agreement that the problem was endemic and that it needed addressing. This simple post has generated more than 200 emails to me over the past few days with 11 being written on Christmas Day so perhaps I should clarify Exetel's situation as I simply don't have the time to keep responding to each one individually.
Firstly, let me state that I have zero problem with the government of the day setting up some sort of 'independent body' to deal with claims of improper or disadvantageous behaviour by any industry sector. In the case of the government of the day's stupidity of setting up the TIO as an industry self regulating body (read self funding and self staffing run by Telstra) I have a major problem but living in Australia's "democracy" I regarded that idiocy as just one more burden made inevitable by the pigs with their snouts in the trough 'government' under which this country operates. I am not going to go into any detail here of the construction and methods of operation of the TIO but if you are interested please type TIO in to your search engine to disabuse yourself that the TIO is either a government organisation (which most of the people writing to me seem to think or a private corporation which the rest think) or read this - one of the more accurate summaries though a little out dated in data:
http://www.tio.com.au/TIOReview/Issuespaper.htm#5
which outlines the terms of a review of the TIO's operating standards in 2006 but gives a general reader a thorough explanation of the TIO and its operations. If you can't be bothered then a summary (that seems to be necessary as so few people who wrote to me seemed to understand the first thing about it) is:
1) The TIO is a telecommunications industry SELF REGULATING organisation that has an 8 person board comprised of 5 representatives from the industry (2 from Telstra, 2 from Optus, 1 from Vodafone) with a further representative elected by the members of the TIO from the telcos, one elected by the ISPs and one nominated by the board itself).
2) The TIO has to generate its own funding for its existence (no government funding).
3) The TIO is to be continually assessed against nominated standards and processes
Since its inception Exetel has measured one aspect of its service performance against the number/levels complaints we receive from the TIO. As an ethical company we take that very seriously and the summary of TIO complaints is presented to the Exetel board on a monthly basis. Over the past 18 months we have noticed a steep escalation of the number of complaints the TIO receives across ALL TIO members but we are only concerned with that trend in how it affects Exetel. For over a year we have been investigating the TIO complaints in more and more detail as, irrespective of what we did, the inexorable increase continued.
Our investigations began to reveal why complaints were increasing and it had nothing to do with any aspect of support or other services provided by Exetel. In November 2008 we received an 'anonymous' letter from an alleged, then recently, ex TIO employee. I doubt that Exetel was the only ISP to receive the letter but being anonymous we had no opportunity of determining anything but what the letter contained. The letter made two points. The first was that all TIO employees had been instructed by 'management' to increase the number of complaints they received by making as many enquires as possible into complaints. The second statement was that as many level one complaints as possible were to be increased to level two complaints by simply changing the status after two days of being at level one. We had/have absolutely no ability to determine whether the letter had any sort of authenticity or whether it was simply mischievous nonsense. However any law suit would involve a discovery process and that would determine that matter.
What we did see, from that time onwards, was a steep increase in the number of level one complaints that were the sheerest nonsense (the customer's complaint didn't involve Exetel at all but "had been registered against Exetel because Exetel's name was mentioned" was not untypical even though we provided no service to the customer) but many others where Exetel could not possibly be involved in the customer's problem. Similarly we began to find increasing incidences where a level one complaint had barely been registered before it became a level two complaint (often on the same day) - fortunately we get very few level two complaints so these really stood out. But the reason for the steep increase was that the TIO simply ignored ALL of its legislated/constitutional requirements - in what looked like a pure need to generate funds.
Anonymous letters aside - it seems clear to at least me that the TIO employees are being directed to operate the TIO complaint handling process by their management in ways that completely breach the TIO constitution. It seems equally clear, to at least me, following their response to our recent letter of demand that they have no intention of operating the TIO within the regulations imposed by the legislation and the constitution. Having been cursorily rebuffed in our attempt to get the TIO to operate according to its constitution we have two choices. We can make the best of another Government screw up and simply add the costs of the TIO's employees gross ineptitude and its criminal management to our planned opex and forget about it - simple to do and, apparently, the attitude of the TIO's other 'forced' members. Or we can produce irrefutable evidence that the TIO is in breach of at least three of its constitutional requirements and allow the Federal court to rule on those contentions and what has to be done should our evidence be accepted.
We would submit that the TIO should be closed down, not because of its past actions but because it is manifestly impossible for it to operate as the legislation requires - if for no other reason than it could NEVER acquire the personnel capable of providing the services required by the legislation - in other words the legislation enacted could never be correctly implemented.
As a minor matter of principle we would also like all of the money back that the TIO has incorrectly collected from us by its criminal acts of stupidity, mental violence and blackmail and we'd like the perpetrators of those criminal acts to be jailed with no "Nuremberg" defences.
It is an 'open and shut case' based on the TIOs own documented (by themselves) actions and other subsequent documentation.