Telstra CEO Sol Trujillo has form on leaving households for months without phone lines, something the Howard Government has known since he was appointed were aware of before Telstra was fully privatized and put beyond the scrutiny of Parliament.
In fact, his former company in the US was sued for hundreds of millions of dollars for such disgraceful behaviour.
When Mr Trujillo was at US West, the company had a policy of misleading customers about connection delays. A class action was mounted and aggrieved customers were eventually compensated, not by US West, but by Qwest, who bought US West and were left to deal with the litigation and subsequent compensation.
Attached is a 2001 article reporting the litigation. (see link below)
I draw your attention to this paragraph:
The court case created a sensation in the fall of 1999, when documents released to the plaintiffs revealed that US West had told its customer-service reps to lie to customers who wanted to know when their telephones would be installed. “If you don’t see a facility in place to install service, give the customer an artificial due date and hope we make it,” the company advised its employees in a memo. “DO NOT advise the customers of a possible held order situation or that there may be a delay in providing service to them.”
Whilst there is no evidence of this practice occurring in Australia, it worries me greatly that customers here in Canberra are also being forced to wait months for a simple landline connection.
I note the story of Mrs Wong of Bruce in the Canberra Times Sunday edition has a disturbing similarity with the US West situation: Canberra residents were told that their lines would be connected last Tuesday after months of waiting.
Disturbingly, Tuesday has come and gone and Telstra’s local mouthpiece, Ian Peters is nowhere to seen or heard!
Are Telstra up to Trujillo’s old US West tricks? If they are, the buck stops with the Howard Government.
Find Lawyers on the Line When Qwest took over US West, it took on a class-action lawsuit, by Stuart Steers at http://www.litigationcolorado.com/articles.php?id=79
For more information, Contact Kate Lundy on 0419421553
