John Linton It seems that there are becoming an endless succession of forms and questionnaires that need to be completed by the nanny state we now live in. Throughout its 'life' to date Exetel has been mercifully free of commonwealth and state interference (apart form paying payroll tax to the NSW government, GST, PAYG and withholding taxes to the Federal government and all the efforts and cost those 'protection monies' involve. Undoubtedly due to our size (and the fact that we are honest and ethical as well as being straightforward) we have 'escaped the attentions' of the mindless clerks employed in the sheltered workshops known as the ACCC and ACEMA. This week though we have had two sensibly qualified people (plus time from all sorts of other people) taken up with 'compliance' issues.
The minor of the two intrusions from the lick-spittles of the Labor nanny state was from the ACCC who objected to our presentation of pricing on our web site ADSL pricing pages. Now, with minor changes we have set out our ADSL pricing in the same way since we commenced business almost 7 years ago. Over that time I can't recall ever receiving any comment, let alone complaint, that the way the pricing is displayed is anything but unequivocally clear. The ACCC insisted that we "show a prospective buyer the total cost over the period of the contract". There I was, thinking that anyone with the mental capacity to open a url , would by definition have the numeracy to see that he/she would have to pay the monthly cost (shown under the column heading = "Monthly Cost" for the number of months specified under the column heading = Contract Term". I was also of the opinion that that this same prospective customer would be able to understand that they would also have to pay the amount specified under the column heading = "Activation Charge" in addition to the number of monthly payments.
Apparently not. Apparently people who visit Exetel's web side can do none of those things. Apparently Exetel was in breach of many and varied recently promulgated conditions of various acts and was liable to massive fines and possibly company closure. "Who are these guys"? (as, if I remember correctly, Butch Cassidy once wondered). I don't know what I found more surprising - that some idiot in the Federal Parliament actually wasted the time it would have taken to get this nonsense developed and passed by the houses or that some drone could actually express the views in the letter I received and subsequently expanding them over the telephone without bursting out into hysterical laughter at the Kafkaesque wording of the documents they quote from. So we changed the layout of the pricing pages and performed the kindergarten calculations demanded by the ACC and went back to the real world.....
....only to be confronted with a much longer peroration from ACEMA demanding information that surpassed Kafkaesqueism and devolved to the nonsensical realms of Charlie Dodgson. Not only were the requests for information nonsensical but they demanded lengthy answers containing immense quantities of information that could not, by any reasonable understanding of how a business actually operates, actually exist. A very sensible person within Exetel, now aided by a second sensible person, is attempting to provide rational answers to questions that only a person of the mental outlook of the Queen of Hearts could contemplate seriously. The combined efforts of sensible people will be able to produce a semblance of a response within the required time frame but it begs a very serious question. What sort of mentally challenged idiot, or group of idiots, could have framed the questions in the first place? Perhaps more importantly - what on Earth are they going to do with the answers they receive from the companies that are forced to respond to them?
I suppose it explains how the screech owl is able to say "affordable high speed fibre broadband for the whole of Australia" in her strangled syllables and keep a straight face.
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