COVID-xcuse

04 Aug COVID-xcuse

Dear Here to Help

My mother-in-law recently passed and we needed to cancel her phone account.

I rang the telecommunications company’s call centre. An automated message told me that they had reduced staff numbers due to COVID and I should go to a store. I duly went to the store, who told me that due to COVID, I needed to ring the call centre.

Frustrated, we refused to leave until someone spoke to me. We were armed with a death certificate and other paperwork. They then told us the account was not in my mother-in-law’s name, but someone else’s and they couldn’t tell us who. My wife asked if the account was in her name and they said no.

Finally, another week (I had to calm down) and another store, they confirmed the account WAS in my wife’s name and they could cancel it.

I feel like some companies, particularly multinationals, are using COVID as an excuse. What are my options?

Thank you for your letter and I am sorry to hear about your mother-in-law.

I had a similar experience when I bought a new phone recently. They refused to help me in the phone company’s store, sending me to their call centre. They wasted two hours of my time, transferring me between staff, putting me on hold to “check”, and asking me the same questions repeatedly. To call the call centre unhelpful would be generous. I, too, returned to the store.

It is not okay for this company to make it so difficult for you to cancel an account. Australian Consumer Law provides consumers with protections. You can always lodge a complaint with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, or the Office of Fair Trading.

Another option if they are making it difficult to cancel an account is to send an email to the company stating that you cancel the account effective a particular date. Then, if they keep charging you, you can lodge a dispute with your credit card provider.

COVID is not an excuse to charge for a service that is not provided. There are many businesses, small businesses in particular, bending over backwards to do good for their clients despite COVID difficulties.

This article comes from my column entitled “Here to Help” in Hunter Local, August 2020 https://www.hunterlocal.com.au/. If you have an everyday problem just begging for a simple, real world solution, send it to “Here to Help” and let’s see what we can achieve.

Elaine Abery has a closet full of great ideas and empowering solutions. She’s also the Director of Unravelling Red Tape, a company dedicated to helping everyday people, not-for-profits and companies change the world through improved decision-making and legislation.