and from Bramshaw's experience, treat OPTUS the same way ...
Written by Julius Grafton, Julius Media Group

Tuesday, 24 March 2009

Telstra have given customer details to third party 'dealers' who in our case have harassed us and attempted to mislead us into signing a contract. JuliusMedia has just had an experience that should be shared. It is scary because the 'dealer' had all our personal information, including birth dates and presumably passwords.
Our case started with a series of calls we received, where a guy from 'Telstra' was saying our contract for fixed lines needed to be renewed. We pointedly asked the guy whether he worked for Telstra and he said he did. We were already aware of a flood of 'Dealers' making calls to Telstra accounts, presumably given the account information by Telstra.

We made a decision not to deal with anyone other than Telstra, after having a problem with a 'Dealer' who contracted our mobile phones several months ago. That 'Dealer' purported to be 'Telstra' but was in fact not, and some of their representations made us suspicious.

Faced with the call to renew our landlines contract (and not being aware we actually had a 'contract') we asked the caller several times whether he worked at Telstra, and he claimed that he did, but the giveaway was that he insisted we call him on a mobile number 'to avoid waiting on hold'. Pressed to confirm he worked for Telstra, he said he had our account details in front of him, including our date of birth.

Given our reluctance to commit over the phone, he faxed a Corporate Services Agreement to us, which nominated him as an employee of a Telstra dealer.

We probably signed something somewhere sometime that allows Telstra to farm out our details to call centre (dealers) that are bounty hunting a commitment from existing clients.

I don't like it. I hereby rescind permission for Telstra to give anyone outside of their direct employees my company or personal information.

-Julius Grafton, for and on behalf of Julius Media Group.

From Bramshaw:  All Telstra employees have a Telstra Employee number which they are obliged to give you - if they will not give it to you they are a fake!

Simon Kemp
Managing Director
BRAMSHAW ICS CONFERENCE COMMUNICATIONS