The Redbacks Web

Your client facing web-based systems are not properly thought out, poorly designed (if there’s any design at all), untested, and, to be perfectly honest, just plain crap. How you permit this sort of crap to go your clients’ front line, in the 21st century, is a scandal. You should be ashamed: these sorts of fundamental failures on your part are of such a basic nature, that your IT (lack of) management needs to be seriously reamed a new set of ….

Let’s start with last month’s effort: I needed to activate a new service, and port a number across from another carrier. Simple task, right? Well, yes, unless you want to use Telstra’s systems.

For some reason, in order to port a number across, you need to call one of their perma-hold call centres. And speak with somebody who has very little English comprehension skills; their skills in the Australian dialects of English are non-existent.

Or they would have been, had you been able to actually call the designated number. Sadly, the number that Telstra offered on their website – remember, we are talking about porting a number into Telstra, so the number, by definition, must not yet be carried by them – was only able to be called from a Telstra service.

So, that was a no go scenario.

STUPID, STUPID, STUPID, STUPID, STUPID.

Ok, it took a couple of hours – not everybody at Telstra seemed to get the point that in order to port a number TO Telstra, you would, in all likelihood, not be calling them from a Telstra service – but once we hammered that point home, the issue was resolved, and the new service activated.

That was a month ago.

Exactly.

This weekend, we’ve needed to engage with Telstra with three different transactions. More, actually, but let’s leave it at three for now, and for simplicity.

1: A friend needed to get a new phone service. On my recommendation, she visited the Telstra store in Crown St Wollongong, to acquire at $30 SIM for a new phone service.

I have a particular aversion to poor service, and in particular, to the very poorly named “service” that is foisted upon us by the telcos, in the name of off-shore call centres.

But that sort of thing pales into insignificance when you’re left standing, like a shag on a rock, in a Telstra retail store, for 20 minutes, while the staff are just talking amongst themselves, leaving customers unattended to. Ok, my friend was not buying a shiny new iPhone, but that should not matter.

Not ever.

It was only when she mentioned her discomfort at being made to wait for such a long time, and that she would head to Optus, that some service magically started to arrive.

Sorry, but that is totally unacceptable performance, Telstra.

2: Associated with my new phone service – the one that I couldn’t port across a month ago – I now needed to refresh the prepaid account. What I wanted to do was to enter my credit card details, and then schedule automatic payments, as the service account’s balance ran dry.

Easy, right?

Well, no. Not exactly.

I was able to find the part on Telstra’s web page that said it was pointing me to where I could schedule payments. It let me enter my credit card details. I needed to nominate a PIN to enable easy access to that credit card.

But wen it came time to specifying how much to pay, and when to pay it … nothing.

Not a scrap of information; no data, no clues.

I was left to manually pay the account, but from what I can tell, automatic scheduled payments are a fantasy; a figment of my imagination.

This of course reflects perfectly the initial – and totally unacceptable – online experience I’d had in trying to port the phone number to Telstra.

3: We now return to my friend: Telstra’s brand new customer. We wanted to register her phone service in their online system, so that she could readily access her balance etc. At some point in the future we’d also like to schedule automatic payments, but see point 2 above for that debacle.

So, we went to Telstra’s online register your phone service page. The first thing requested is the existing account number, or click to enter your prepaid service number. We clicked, and entered the service number.

The form then asked for further details: name (first and last) date of birth, and email address. All basic stuff; all correctly entered. Upon pressing the “Next” button, we were directed to a screen that informed us that we should wait for a validation PIN that was being sent to the phone. When that arrived, we entered it, and pressed the “next” button.

Only to be returned to screen 1. A blank screen 1.

Start again; repeat the process.

With the same outcome.

We then went through a process whereby we were not sent to the second screen for several attempts, before finally getting through to the second screen, entering the PIN …. and once more being sent to a blank screen 1.

Telstra, this is not a good system.

It is not a workable system.

It is not a user friendly system.

It is a total waste of your clients’ time and resources.

It is an insult to your clients to expect them to use these poorly designed, and clearly untested, systems.

There is simply no excuse for this level of unacceptable performance on your part. I will not describe to you the words that my friend – a new customer of your’s, with just two days’ experience and absolutely no good things to report – used in describing her disappointment.

It’s about time that you grew up. That you learned a little about web development. About software development. And about software testing.

Clearly, this is uncharted territory for you, and for that, you should be ashamed.

You should be bloody well ashamed.

What is it about restaurant and cafe owners that they think it’s ok to dictate to the their customers when it’s ok to eat what?

If I wander in to a restaurant at 11am (or 11pm)  and I want breakfast, what the hell business is it of theirs to tell me that it’s not breakfast time? I accept that it might not be their breakfast time, but if I fucking well want breakfast, and they have the wherewithall to make it, and I’m prepared to pay for it, who gives a fuck about it?

Last Sunday we were at a cafe in Double Bay, it was a little after 11, and we wanted some bruschetta.  Not a big deal you might think? It sort of became one because the waitstaff needed to check with the management to make sure that it was the right time of bloody day for them to be serving such an item.

Did they have tomato in the kitchen? Check!

Did they have onions in the kitchen? Check!

Garlic? Check!

Basil? Olive Oil? Bread? Check, check, check!

What the hell was the bloody problem?

Hey, Mr restaurant owner, get over yourself. Your staff were very good, but your holier than thou attitude sucks big time. You remain in business despite yourself, you little prick.

Wake up and understand that you are in a service industry – of your own choice – and as such, you need to be mindful that you are serving the public.

Which includes me.

I have a sticker on my mailbox at home. It’s very clear, it’s in very good condition.

And it says “No Junk Mail”.

That, to me, seems to be a very simple message. Nothing difficult about it. Nothing too challenging to comprehend, I would have thought.

Yet, despite that message’s inherent simplicity and clarity, those lowlife, greedy little real estate agents in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, seem to place themselves above their respect for the people whose hands they are reaching out to for sales, and ignoring that message.

I’ve had a couple of them tell me that their leaflets are not junk mail. Pardon me? That is not your call: I decide what is junk mail, and any and all marketing and advertising material, not personally addressed to me, falls within my definition of junk mail. Want to argue with me? Fine; I’ll remember your rusde and disrespectful attitude when I come to need the services of a reputable agent.

You will not be on the very short list!

I’ve even suffered the experience of one stupid estate agent sending me her unwelcome market material, and then rudely arguing with me that it was not junk mail. After speaking with her senior management, she relented … to a point. Sadly, she is a very slow learner, and clearly not a mental giant: having recieved my complaint that she had ignored my “No Junk Mail” sticker, she then delivered to me … her own personalised version of a “No junk Mail” sticker.

A couple of points to be made here: I already was in possession of the appropriate sticker. Were this idiot paying any attention at all, she would have noticed this – it was the point of my initial complaint, and thus it should have been immediately evident to her that sending me one of hers was not exactly a smart move.And especially sending me her personalised version, with her contact details and butt ugly photo of herself on it.

Of course the subtext was that I did not want any of her marketing materials at all: which part of that was not exactly clear to her? All of it, it would seem, because she also gave me her personally emblazoned post-it notes. A prime idiot of the lowest order.

Anbd so it transpired that, six months later, this poor excuse for a life form still fills my letter box with her crap. She blames the the people she hires to distribute this rubbish.

I don’t buy that: take responsibility for your actions, you little piece of brainless excrement. if your contractors fail to perform the job they’re contacted to do, don’t fucking pay them, you idiot. Maybe that will make them – and you – take notice that it’s high bloody time that you paid a little respect to the people in your prospective sales catchment area.

In the meantime, go to hell. You know my address, and you should take heed: I will not let you get away with this.