Telecom Slips Off the Edge

"But a marketing person familiar with the campaign said Telecom's advertising agency, Saatchi & Saatchi, considered it "edgy" and expected it to be controversial.

He told the Herald: "I think this thing is a bloody embarrassment. The rest of the world will take the piss out of us. This will be much better sport than the rugby. It's inexplicable."" - NZ Herald

If you describe yourself as edgy then you are not. Charlie Sheen, Althea Flynt and Alasdair Thompson edgy , advertising grunt in Parnell not edgy. If Telecom really wanted to be edgy they would have gone on a drunken splurge through Auckland's adult entertainment venues, overdosed on heroin, ranted that women can't play World Cup Rugby because they would bleed all over the field and then burnt down Eden Park, now that would be edgy.

OCH AYE

Whale Oils best effort yet.. Total piss take of Reynolds and XT advert...

Its brilliant!

we bow to the whale......

SQUIGGLES

Well , well what have we here?

One of these things is just like the other ....


Heres Telecoms new squiggly star


















And heres the New Dowse Lower Hutt Art Gallery one...

Art for Arts sake - money for jam?

So what we want to know - was it the same agency that designed both??? Surely not..

TELECOM = FALSE PROMISES

We got a call last night from someone whom we think probably lives in Manila ,saying she was from Telecom and wanted to talk about a good deal on my Cellphone plan.

Anyway after a quick scan of my account she declared she could replace my current plan with its monthly usage which sets us back about $200 a month for another plan that would cost $90 a month on the new XT network and i would get a new free phone.

Cool , I said a free phone! I had been thinking about upgrading my blackberry. Oh dear she said sorry I could have any other phone but a blackberry...

I told her she had just lied to me as she had said i could have a free phone..

After a while I got sick of the too-ing and fro-ing that was going nowhere and said that I wanted her to email me with the details and the offer she had given me over the phone.

I have yet to see a thing but then again Telecom was probably a bit busy today..

And the reason we have to stick with Telecom is simply because of coverage.

Otherwise we would have ditched them years ago.

Bastards they are - bastards.

TELECONS

We blogged the other day about the demise of our blackberry trackball. It had a terminal fur ball.
Essentially Telecom's "authorised dealer" was going to charge us $250 to replace and fit a new roller ball. The phone is out of warranty but they refused to supply the drop and load trackball kit. and it would take a week.

We smelled a con. And we were right. We paid $20 including post and package from Arwel in Porirua on Trade Me.Turn around time to get the replacement parts - 48 hours.
Time to take out old bit and put in new bits - 45 seconds - yip you read it right - 45 seconds

It works a treat.

So we will be ringing Telecom tomorrow for some answers.

We will blog in due course.

BLACKBERRY

Our blackberry is an essential part of our communication arsenal. It has lessened the stress in our life and we have in the space of two years worn the bugger out. Well , we have worn the trackball out. the rest works fine.

It was just out of warranty when we first started getting problems with the wee ball sticking. So we went on line and found a myriad of sites dedicated to helping with the problem. Anyway - we opened it up and pulled out a wadge of fluff and it went again. Sadly its now beyond repair.

We went on line and found an off shore site that sells the track balls and worked out that the little suckers were quite cheap. US$ 10 bucks.

So today we toddled on into the ORB store on the Terrace. A happy bunch of very helpful young people are always there with a smile and some advice. So we rock on up to the counter and ask to order a trackball kit.

"Has to be sent away sorry." the girly says.

Nah I said, the phone is out of warranty and I know how to replace it - all I want is the kit.

Ahh says the lovely girl behind the counter - She will ring and ask.

She does.
She tells the " authorised dealer" what she wants and I am impressed with her reply -

" Nah thats too expensive"

She gets off the phone and tells me it was going to cost $250 to get a replacement trackball fitted.

I am due to upgrade my phone in 3 weeks so I decide to hold off and the staff promise if they get a broken blackerry with a good trackball they will ring.

Anyway tonite we went online to trademe. $20 later and we have a trackball kit on its way from Porirua - including free postage.

So when we fit the trackball and its all okay we will be asking some pretty tough questions of Telecom.

Interestingly there are whole websites overseas who just sell trackballs. cheap - with instructions -
So are we being ripped off here in NZ ? We think so.

INDGLISH

This just in....

Our communications roundsman, Telephone Prawn, has finally cooled down long enough to record his experiences for readers.

Seems Telephone is a phone fanatic and lives with his trusty cellphone. But he is old, and quite slow, and can’t really tote a telephone directory (and they get wet.)

So, he uses (endlessly) the telecom 018 assistance service.

It was a great marriage. He “paid 50 cents, plus any applicable telecom call charges” and got straight to his target.

But that changed!

Some months ago he phoned for: Parliament Buildings, Wellington. A polite Eastern lady told him that there was no such number in the Wellington directory. He insisted that she check again and she replied: “Here it is, do you mean Paramatta Building Supplies?

He then phoned a direct line to a Minister’s office and got the number.

Last week he phoned for: “The Wellington office of Lion Nathan.” An equally polite woman said there is no such listing!

Then last night: “A Paraparaumu number for G. and M. Duncan. Miss Polite gave some examples – nothing like the request! Telephone Prawn lost his cool and after a one sided screaming match, Miss Polite put him through……..through to another exchange with English being the main language. The call went straight through.

We believe Telecom has a bloody lot of questions to answer:

• Are they running a key service from offshore;
• If they aren’t why not get a foolproof computer system to search;
• Don’t we have a government-imposed employment target for NZ residents;
• How angry must a caller get before he gets a “native” resident;
• Has the service run down through the patently poor service?

And if you think thats bad, Lambcut rang 018 to find the number for a restaurant for a very important tussock jumper who was looking for a flash nosebag joint while visiting Wellington recently...

She suggested the Whitehouse on Oriental Parade
He said book it..

She rings 018 - and asks for the WhiteHouse Oriental Parade Wellington..
The call centre bunny ,after a lengthy search, says there is no such joint.
Lambcut very slowly says I want the Whitehouse - Oriental Parade -Wellington

Ohh says the eager Call centre Bunny again - THE WHITEHOUSE in Washington USA???

At that point Lambcut gave up...

TVNZ CROSSING THE LINE?

Well you have to ask. According to Chris Keall from NBR On Breakfast this morning the ever chirpy Tamiti Coffey bragged about his new Xt phone - given to him by Telecom. And he did the live cross in front of the large Telecom XT launch billboard. This from Chris's blog this morning:

NZ Comms originally announced its pre-launch event today in anticipation of Telecom's XT going live on Wednesday. Yet while XT is now off until May 31, its ghost launch continues to upstage; I just saw TV1 Breakfast weatherman Tamati Coffey bragging to Paul Henry about his free XT phone. His choice of location to deliver the forecast this morning: in front of a giant Richard Hammond billboard.]

We reckon that is crossing the line. It is the sort of thing that Australian regulators are watching closely and we want to see NZ regulators keep an eye on.


Update: Hey sometimes we get stuff wrong - this was one of those occasions - this from an ever vigilant prawn reader.
Thx BB.

It didn't actually go down like that at all. Tamati was standing in front of a parking building, on top of which was a Telecom XT billboard. It was Paul Henry, jokingly, who asked the cameraman to bring the billboard properly into shot (it was only just visible, off to the side), at which point Henry said to Tamati something like, "stay right there, you'll get given a new Telecom phone." He then later had the cameraman bring the billboard back into shot and asked everyone in the studio if they wanted a new phone, as Telecom would surely send them one as they were so kindly keeping their billboard in shot. Peter Williams said he didn't need a new phone. A couple of the floor girls yelled from off camera that they'd love one. Coran Dan, the business reporter, said he wasn't interested as "I'm with Vodafone." Far from being a gross piece of product placement driven by Tamati it was simply Paul Henry mucking about. Talk about Chinese whispers getting the message mixed up!

TELECOM RORTS BLACKBERRY USERS

We bought a Blackberry last April - we love it. Its on a 24 month plan. All good. Not so, it seems buried in the last few paras of Chris Kealls revelation in the NBR that Vodophones I-phones will run on Telecoms wizzy XT 3G network, is this nasty little insight about our favourite phone.

The telco has yet to say if any BlackBerries will feature in its XT line-up, for example (Telecom currently does currently have a “worldmode” BlackBerry 8830 aimed at business travellers - many of whom may be surprised that their RIM device won’t run on the new XT network.

And because the BlackBerry handset relies on a proprietary BlackBerry server, it’s far less of a candidate for network hopping.

Well yes we are bloody surprised - we would not have entered into a 24month contract if we had realised that the Blackberry face dont fit with the XT network.

We want answers and quick bloody smart.

JOYCE SIGNALS CHANGE OF DIRECTION FOR BROADBAND

While in principle we think that this is a good decision we don't want to see the governments thinking hijacked by Telecom. Joyce is wise to relook at what is needed to give the country the information artery that it needs. There are many smaller players who had built some very good strategic alliances and partnerships that will deliver on the government's aims. Joce should recognise and relate to them easily. What he did in Radio, they have done in the IT community.

We have already posted on the dilemma that has faced the US on this issue and the very good analysis in the New York Times. It is time to think smart, not big, and its time for the government to listen to new voices.