Australia's largest carrier, Telstra, wants to win back customers it claims have fallen victim to slamming -- the fraudulent transfer of customers between carriers.
Telstra has set up a freecall number to its sales division that the company describes as a hotline for complaints about the unethical sales techniques of other carriers.
The SalesWatch Hotline -- so-called because it provides the mechanism to monitor feedback about unethical sales tactics -- puts customers through to specialist sales staff on hand to advise you on how to change back to Telstra.
A Telstra spokesperson interviewed by ZDNet Australia was cagey about revealing how many operators manned the hotline and said that advisors managed a range of queries and weren't devoted to the SalesWatch Hotline issue.
"The hotline is co-ordinated out of one of our marketing departments," the spokesperson said when asked about the management structure.
Whilst the legitimate problem of slamming is the second most common complaint received by the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO), Telstra was reluctant to reveal how many of its customers it estimated were embezzled by this technique.
The carrier has recently ramped up a campaign to draw back droves of disloyal customers through a series of TV commercials that encourage customers to ring the carrier to find out why they should return.
The TIO explains slamming to be the by-product of increased competition in the core telecommunications market. "More people are transferring between service providers and this has led providers to use aggressive and unethical marketing tactics," a TIO representative said.
According to the TIO, some of those tactics may include high-pressure sales pitches and the recording of sales calls, in which the customer may be unaware that their conversation will become the basis of an agreement.
Whilst Telstra is placing itself as an intermediary with whom to lodge complaints about other carriers, the federal government's official telecommunications complaints structure for consumers is centred around the TIO.
The TIO insists customers must try to resolve various complaints directly with the carriers concerned. And failing resolution, consumers may lodge a formal complaint with the TIO itself.
"We won't take up a complaint unless the consumer has tried to resolve it with the service provider in question first," the TIO spokesperson added.
