KEY POINTS:
Vodafone New Zealand has this week taken the early lead in the race to produce 2009's most snarky piece of corporate communications.
A press release from the telecommunications company on Monday, announcing it was backtracking on earlier plans to charge customers $1.50 for the privilege of receiving their monthly bill in the post, began with the sentence: "Well, that didn't work, did it?"
The missive goes on to essentially accuse Vodafone's two-faced, environmentally unfriendly customer base of selfishly derailing the company's money-saving attempt to do away with paper-based bills.
The release isn't phrased quite that way, of course, but it certainly oozes an indignant tone which, to the company's credit, at least made a refreshing change from the usual marketing puffery that laces most corporate dispatches. Some background: last September Vodafone decreed that to save the environment (not to mention money) it was scrapping automatic snail-mail bills. Instead it planned to email and/or text its customers to advise how much they owed each month.
Those obsessive-compulsives who wanted a breakdown of how they'd actually amassed said debt were free to log on to the company's website to download an electronic version of the traditional statement.
In the words of this week's release: "Nice idea, we thought. People will like that we're thinking of the trees and the convenience factor will be a big plus. Certainly the trial group liked it, so we rolled it out to the public. To encourage customers along we also said we'd charge $1.50 per month for those customers who still want a paper bill, with that charge kicking in some time in the first half of this year."
But funnily enough, when push came to shove, it transpired customers objected to being charged $18 a year for the previously free privilege of receiving a printed invoice.
Or as this week's release put it: "Our customers have told us they quite like the idea of online billing but they hate, hate, HATE the idea of being charged to receive a paper bill."
It continued: "Did we mention they hate it? Well they do. And we're going to listen to what they say.
"So, being the company we are we've decided to do a u-turn, an about face, a 180: now you can get your bill in the post each month if you so want, and it won't cost a penny.
"In fact, we'll go a step further - customers can opt to carry on getting the email or TXT alerts, they can get a paper bill posted out to them or they can choose to get their bill emailed out to them in PDF format.
"And we'd like to say sorry for all the trouble. We're not perfect. We're only human but hopefully we're grown up enough to 'fess up when we make a mistake."
Apology accepted, but I think Vodafone's mistake here goes beyond having a two-faced, environmentally unfriendly customer base.
I note from reading through a Geekzone.co.nz discussion group posting on the subject that I wasn't the only Voda-ite to a) fail to get the promised monthly email and text alerts advising me it was time to pay the company some money and to b) have difficulties downloading the PDF bills off the company's website.
These difficulties have led me to make calls to the telco's helpline number, where my inquiries have been politely answered by Vodafone customer service representatives based in Egypt. One was able to email me the elusive PDF I was after, another assured me the text and email alerts I hadn't seen had definitely been sent.
