Having public flame-wars with customers generally isn’t a winning move for a corporation. But doing so in the context of the blog world is a particularly bad idea. The first issue is that almost everyone who regularly reads Anand’s blog will trust him instead of a corporation (Anand is well regarded in the free software community). So it’s not as if accusing Anand of lying will gain anything.
But when a director of the company starts doing this it makes the issue more dramatic and interesting to many people on the net. Now Anand’s side of the story will get even more readers, of course Anand’s side was always going to get more readers than Exetel – I’m sure that Anand’s blog is more popular than that of Steve Waddington. I wouldn’t be surprised if my blog was more popular than Anand’s and now my readers will be following the Exetel saga for the Lulz. I’m sure that I won’t be the last person to comment on this.
The most amazing thing is that Steve Waddington talks about having to pay to take the TIO complaint. So I guess that means I should start complaining whenever I get bad service from an ISP and cost them some money! I should have stayed with Optus and started complaining all the time when they caused me problems!
One thing that Steve and people like him should keep in mind is that members of our community are not only heavy users of the Internet, we generally recommend ISPs to other people, and many of us make money working for ISPs. If you want your ISP to get good reviews and to be able to hire good staff then attacking people like Anand is not the way to go.
Let me comment on some, self evident inaccuracies, that cast doubt on the level of accuracy of the other “facts” contained in the entry you cite:
1) For a numerate person to quote a simple figure as 1/6 when the number he is citing is clearly less than 1/4 is silly enough.
2) To mis-represent the base number cited (625) which appears to be the product of the sum and one of its components is careless to the point of dishonesty.
To draw an incorrect inference from a double stupidity is, well, whatever any individual sees it as.
3) As far as I know, and my knowledge of the law if massively imperfect, you can’t libel someone unless you use an actual person’s name and then it must also be a real name that is capable of being recognised…difficult to libel John Smith without narrowing the actual John Smith you are referring to.
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1310126
Whirlpool is now discussing this issue.
Exetel is the worst internet company around they have no customer service other then when it involves giving them money. It took over 2 weeks and 5 phone calls to get an issue sorted with my internet, with staff telling me they would call me back and never did.
They also have a forum to help troubleshoot when you have internet issues and upon posting my question in the forum one of the Exetel staff members picked my post apart and was rude as hell towards me.
Clearly they dont wish to keep customers past their initial contract or get new ones
Save yourself the effort and go with another company. I am moving soon and will never use Exetel again