Stunned by all the Greed and Lies
I have just finished a 51 minute phone call with the Internet service provider ‘dodo’ and I am furious! Some of our home customers that are using dodo for their Internet have reported to us that dodo is advising them to purchase Windows 7 with a new PC??? What is this all about? I posed as a potential new wireless broadband customer with a Daughter that was already a dodo customer to find out some facts. This 51 minute call left me despising my own industry for the corporate greed and lies that get brandished around.
It reminded me of a visit to a Toyota dealer 30 years ago with my Dad when I was just 16. Nissan had just released their turbo diesel Patrol, Toyota didn’t have their own turbo diesel back then – so the salesman gleefully & adamantly told us that the ‘new’ Patrols were “flipping over because they were hard to control” – what a crock!
I started the call by pressing the right buttons to join as a new customer. I said that I was about to buy a new laptop for myself and that I wanted to join dodo wireless broadband – what laptop type should I buy? I was told to buy Windows 7 because “it was better”. Further technical questions from me had the saleswoman putting me through to tech support in a big hurry (I guess she had sales quotas to meet). I talked to another woman for another 10 minutes however her IT knowledge also fell a little short of answering my questions. A third person in the form of a guy from ‘senior tech support’ was called upon to help – I was really moving up the ranks.
The ‘senior tech’ also suggested Windows 7 – unless I needed the extra memory of “Window 8”. This was very ill placed logic and upon the brief enlightenment that I offered about the differences between 32Bit & 64Bit versions of either 7 or 8 this guy had me on hold for someone more senior yet – was I about to talk to Mr Bird himself? The 4th little helper was another guy that was thus far unique since he had considerably better English skills so a temporary bond was quickly forged – although Win 7 was again the recommendation.
With lines of communication opened up it soon became apparent that dodo had some stocks of ‘the latest 4G Internet dongles’ (the Al2100 model) as well as heaps of stocks of the older 3G devices (the Alcatel720). The latest, and the much faster model is Windows 8 compatible, however the earlier device is not! So why were they recommending Windows 7 – yes, you guessed it – to get rid of the older inferior stock – and he admitted it! This is where I start to fume – let’s baffle the customer with bullshit to unload our older, slower, less compatible stock!!! Too bad they end up with an older operating system and a slower connection.
I hate corporate greet and misinformation – especially where the consumer is relying on the advice of the so called expert on the other end of the line. Also, before a giant bird tries to poo on me from a great height with a slander suit, let’s get this straight. I recorded the entire 51 minute phone call & yes, I have made an offsite backup copy. There was however, some good that came from pressing the compatibility point. I was told that my daughter – that I reported as an existing dodo customer with a new Win 8 laptop and an older ‘not compatible dongle’ could call up and get it replaced with one of the newer models – without extra charge.
I don’t have another spare 51 minutes to call yet another Internet service provider, however, I have already seen similar (and worse) despicable ploys in the past from even the biggest, longest serving and most trusted Telco’s in Australia. The consumer can most easily be misled in the technology fields (they just don’t know otherwise) – case in point is the current ‘trendy’ rush to so many of the non-mature hosted cloud services being pushed down business’ throats at present.
Future Byte Me topics can be emailed to [email protected] and Bruce is contactable at Kerr Solutions, 205 Musgrave Street or on 49 222 400.
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