‘Nuisance’ customers

Press, 27 June 1989, Page 32

‘Nuisance’ customers

Sir, —It will take a lot to convince me that leopards (or bureaucrats) can change their spots and without doubt the Kiwi must be a very dozy bird if we keep letting them get away with it. The leopard in question, Telecom, intends to introduce (business customers only) a charge for a directory inquiry. Only 45 cents plus GST per inquiry- That policy stinks. Can you imagine private enterprise thinking they can get away with that! What sort of response would the butcher get if he charged a dollar to tell a customer he had sold out of pork chops? Also the Bank of New Zealand recently informed me that they charge $4O per hour for investigating customer inquiries on unidentified entries on statements. In my business, customer inquiries are not nuisance value to be actively discouraged, they are the name of the game. Now I can’t do much about the Telecom one (apart from save up my directory inquiries until I get home), but I can and have fixed the BNZ problem of nuisance customer. I have closed the account and moved on to a bank I hope is more customer orientated. I can’t imagine where people in monopolistic policy-fixing situations went for marketing training, it sure wasn’t private enterprise.—Yours, etc.,

PAUL EDEN. June 20, 1989.