There’s no spin like Telkom spin.
“You’d think that if you were a company with a monopoly position, huge profits and provided essential services at exorbitant prices, the very least you could do would be to be nice to your customers. Evidently not, according to the Telkom method. This seems to state that the route to take is to screw your customer royally, and then be obnoxiously rude to them when they complain.
Everyone I know, and quite a few people that I don’t, know my personal feelings for Telkom’s unethical pricing practices in South Africa. It has long been my personal hobbyhorse that Telkom needs to be forcibly tamed and then dragged into the twenty-first century. Lately it seems that the mutterings and murmurings of the similarly disenchanted are starting to reach the public ear. Over the last couple of weeks in almost every publication that I have read, there seems to be some complaint or negative story about Telkom (I liked the story about Suzanne Vos, the IFP MP, who went to a Halloween party dressed as a Telkom bill – it was the scariest thing that she could think of). This bad press has ranged from a front-page article in The Citizen with the headline “TELKOM RIPOFF” (couldn’t have said it better myself) to more technical articles in the IT press about the monopoly’s new ADSL pricing system.
Which brings us to Telkom’s biggest and loudest critic: Rudolph Muller and www.MyADSL.co.za , an online community website dedicated to consumer issues in the broadband market. MyADSL has more than 7000 registered users, which is quite a significant number when you consider that there are only approximately 150000 broadband users in South Africa. Mr. Muller, with the support of his members (from disparate backgrounds and interests) has been pressing Telkom for action to make broadband Internet more affordable since 2003. The site itself has a huge following and was included in the Financial Mail’s top five sites for 2004, and the large member base has formed a vibrant online community.
MyADSL was the group that created the pressure for ICASA to hold hearings on Telkom’s ADSL offering, which resulted in draft recommendations that were highly critical of Telkom. Muller is often quoted in articles about broadband and as an academic has conducted studies together with the University of Johannesburg on the various broadband offerings in South Africa. In fact, he is just the kind of person that a marketer would want on their side.
If you were a marketer and were able to get access to a large number of your customers easily, in order to hear their impressions of your product, to hear their complaints and to find a way to satisfy their needs, you’d probably grab the opportunity with both hands. Not Telkom. Despite continual requests from Muller for a representative from Telkom to take part in his forums, and an ongoing request for communication from the monopoly – the result is exactly …nada.
Muller had a meeting with Papi Molotsane, the CEO of Telkom who evidently assured him that Telkom would like to enter into dialogue with MyADSL, and that the corporation was determined to become more customer-centric. Well, obviously someone forgot to tell the marketing and communications departments.
On the MyADSL site today Muller posted an email from the Telkom Corporate Communications department, berating him for asking questions about Telkom’s plans and accusing him of refusing to set up time for a meeting with the Marketing department. You can read it here (complete with bad grammar and misspelling).
And if that wasn’t enough, Telkom then released an incredibly badly written Press Release, claiming that all the bad press that they have been receiving lately is because people don’t understand them, that their ISP (Internet Service Provider) customers are frauds and thieves and that, actually, MyADSL members agree with their new pricing policy. Fair enough, I suppose, if it was true. But it isn’t – it is the most blatant bit of spin that I have seen. Read it for yourself.
The claims made have very little basis in fact, the most blatant being this one: “Mr. Muller’s six thousand MyADSL members also expressing their overwhelming support of this change in that 85% voted in favour of an ADSL usage based billing strategy, according to a poll done on the MyADSL website.” Well, this is partly true: there was a poll. In fact there were two polls. The first one (the one that Telkom seems to have decided is a good one to mention) asks the following: “Would you support a ‘pay-pergig’ ADSL billing system if the associated costs were in line with international trends?” Telkom just seems to have forgotten to add in the last bit about international trends – I wonder why? The results were similar to those that they quoted – 85% positive. However a more recent poll, surprisingly not mentioned in the press release, paints a slightly different picture. “Do you support a usage based ADSL billing system?” had an overwhelming (94%) negative response. Evidently there’s spin and then there is Telkom spin.
What can we learn from the Telkom method? If you are a monopoly there is no need to respect your customers? If you say it often enough then it must be true? If you are critical of the services that you receive, then you obviously don’t understand the offering? That customers don’t know what their needs are? Telkom’s methods seem to run contrary to conventional thinking… or is it just me?
I cannot wait for some liberalization of the telecoms sector; improved competition simply has to improve the service that customers receive.
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