A colleague, knowing that I had recently fallen foul of yet another telco for thousands of dollars of “excess usage charges”, sent me “this link(Another Telco rort)”:http://j.mp/cXGqiP, presumably thinking it might make me feel better.
Instead, it prompted me to recall that this is the fourth time a telco (a different one each time) has gouged, or attempted to, gouge me.
I am unable to use the services of one large Australian Telco because, even though they do not attempt to collect it, they retain a record of a debt in their system. So, if I attempt to sign up for a new service, they accept my application subject to the payment of an eight year old $14,000 debt.
Another luckily collapsed under the weight of its rich and powerful promoters while suing me for thousands in excess usage.
Yet another continued to charge me $500 per month for services which were available from other vendors, and to their new customers, for about $90 per month. In this case I was an early adopter of a new service and ended up paying several thousand dollars more than the provider charged later signups for the same service. They hid behind their “contract” to insist on payment.
In spite of ombudsmen, courts and governments we, the innocent consumer continue to be gouged daily.
The much vaunted Ombudsmen (or Ombudswomen) are put in place by wimpish governments, or corporate cartels, who want to be able to say “it’s got nothing to do with me”. In the telco field, my experience suggests they are mere sycophants who may as well be in the pay of the telcos.
The courts are, as is the legal system in general, little more than an all powerful trade union with the sole objective of protecting the income of the lawyers. As a friend involved in a legal argument pointed out recently, “any connection between the commercial legal system in Australia, and justice or equity is purely accidental”.
And, worst of all, governments are so far removed from anything to do with the real world that they are good only to gouge citizens at every turn with absolutely no intention of providing anything remotely like a service to the community in return. They are the arch gougers, totally unaccountable to anyone or any thing. They are so into gouging as a daily activity that they would not be able to see that what the telcos are doing is anything other than normal behaviour!
In this case, as in all other similar situations, the carrier is simply gouging, it doesn’t matter what the contract says, it’s unconscionable that the price bears no relationship to the cost of the service.
It’s simply about time that the courts and/or our Governments recognise that gouging is nothing more than the abuse of power and should be stopped.
