Sideswipe

Read on to find out how this flyer upset a Telecom customer.

Paul Nilsson has chucked away his alarm clock and uses the alarm on his Telecom cellphone to wake him up. Unable to change the time on his phone himself before bed on Saturday, he nodded off content in the knowledge that Telecom would update it for daylight-saving time automatically. Only it didn't, making him late for work.

Below is an abridged account of his email conversation with Telecom.

Paul: Your system did not effect the daylight-saving time change until after 6am so you stuffed up my whole day. Daylight-saving changeover is 2am. Why did your system not make the change at that time, and what are you going to do to compensate me for the inconvenience caused?

Telecom: We are not able to effect the change at exactly 2am on every phone as this would cause the network to go down due to the large volume of mobiles connected to our network.

I do apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused you and can certainly understand your frustration. We are not able to guarantee the time by which each individual mobile will be updated and will not be able to offer you a credit on your account as a result of this.

Paul: Either I should have been able to manually change the time the night before or Telecom should have sent a message over the preceding day or two to advise your mobile customers how the daylight-saving changeover works.

Telecom: If you would like to send me a reply email advising of the type of credit that you would be looking for in resolution of this matter, I will certainly review the viability of this.

Paul: One month's credit on the mobile and an outline of what Telecom proposes to do about it for next year.

Telecom: This alarm is a feature of the phone and not a service offered by Telecom. The network updates the time on the phone as quickly as possible. There is nothing we can do to prevent this from happening again next year, although you can turn your phone off and then on again just after the daylight-saving changeover (e.g. after 2am) as this will automatically update your phone.

We do not feel that a credit is warranted under these circumstances. I would recommend that if it is crucial to you to have the correct time during the next daylight-saving change that you employ other means to ensure that you have the correct time.

Paul: If it was merely a feature of the phone I would have been able to change the time the night before. To suggest turning it off and on again after 2am is ridiculous. Telecom has been quite happy to send out pointless, annoying automatic texts for marketing purposes. Surely you can send one out once a year that is actually useful? And why ask me how much credit I want on my account as compensation and then give me nothing?

Paul is still waiting for a reply from Telecom, but the flyer above is what just landed in his letterbox.

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TV One led the late-night news on Tuesday with its dumping of a newsreader, ahead of Bali bombing follow-ups and news of Cabinet ministers standing down, but someone forgot to tell the marketing department that Judy Bailey was off the team.

The bulletin was followed immediately by a promotion for One News featuring an intrepid outside broadcasting crew setting up a live link as Bailey waits expectantly in the studio for the latest dispatches.