All posts by Alistair Lattimore

About Alistair Lattimore

My name is Alistair Lattimore, I'm in my very early 30's and live on the sunny Gold Coast in Australia. I married my high school sweet heart & we've been together for longer than I can remember. Claire and I started our family in September 2008 when Hugo was born and added a gorgeous little girl named Evie in May 2010. You can find me online in the typical hangouts, Google+, Twitter & facebook. .

Courtesy Calls Done Right

General

Friday morning I received an unexpected call from Telstra, my initial thoughts were they were going to be calling about some sort of a billing mistake and I was going to have to pay them more money for some random reason.

To my surprise, the Telstra consultant was calling to review my experience with the company and was inquiring about why I had recently chosen to not renew my contact with them. The guy on the phone was polite, fast and didn’t hassle me for choosing to leave for another provider. I pointed out that the only reason I left was that one of their competitors have packages available at the moment that Telstra are not competitive against and he acknowledged that fact. He asked if I’d like to be placed on their call register for 18 months in the future and I was happy to oblige as by that time I expect that they’ll probably be competitive and I’ll no doubt come back to Telstra if the price and features are right.

Moral of the story, be fast, efficient and don’t stuff your previous customers around and they are more likely to not hate you.

Navigating Automated Phone Systems

General, Productivity

After moving house recently, we’ve had to go through the paces of updating all of our contact information with various companies.

I called three different companies one after another to update my information and some were definitely better than others:

Telstra
Without any shadow of a doubt, my encounter with Telstra was the clear winner. When I called, the automated phone prompting was clear, easy to follow and fast to navigate; which resulted in me getting to a consultant faster. During the process, I entered my phone number to speed things up and when I was handed to a consultant I didn’t have to repeat myself. Within about 90 seconds, he updated my details and reissued the final bills to our new address for our mobile and home phone.
Vodafone
Vodafone came in second in my opinion, the automated phone prompting was good but could have used a little work. I felt there were too many options along the way but I got to where I needed to go without too much fuss. My criticism of Vodafone would be the time I waited in queue to get to talk to someone; it was close to 10 minutes compared to less than 2 minutes compared to Telstra. To the credit of Vodafone, the staff were friendly, helpful and efficient and were happy to answer a few other questions while I was on the phone.
GE Finance
GE Finance took the wooden spoon, pretty much horrible service all around. The automated phone prompting was shocking, I actually called back twice, once because I got sick of waiting and another because I chose the wrong option on one of the menus and for some reason couldn’t go ‘back’. After selecting an option, more than once the next step included options from a previous step which was just confusing – they are meant to be narrowing my options, not expanding them. I waited in queue for about 15 minutes and when I finally got through to a consultant, even though I entered my account information into the phone earlier, I was made to repeat it anyway. Although the consultant got the job done, I wouldn’t say they were friendly, happy or chirpy so it just made the encounter that little less pleasant.

Who do you think have the worst automated phone prompting?

Dear God

Life

After finding out that most Gold Coast real estate agents suck and having to move house, one of my worst fears have been realised; it doesn’t look like I’m going to have broadband at my new home!

As soon as the new phone service was provisioned, I submitted an ADSL transfer application to my current ISP. Checking the status of the transfer, it went through a couple different stages but ultimately ended up in a held status stating that there isn’t enough available copper.

I believe it might be time to submit an application into Bigpond and see if they have magical powers which help them find available copper that was previously unavailable to a competing ISP. If that bites the dust as well, other channels will have to be pursued; not having fast, permanent internet at home just doesn’t cut the mustard.

Dear god, please provide me with fast reliable internet at a reasonable price.

Out Of Commission

Life

I’m sorry for the lack of updates on here of late, two major things are going on at the moment:

  • I’ve just moved house and I’m still praying that the gods will provide me with broadband once more. I’ve had broadband since it became available in Australia, so I sure hope that Telstra can perform some magic and provide me with it again or I’ll be forced to find alternative means!
  • We’re coming to the end of the first stage of a major block of development at work and the pressure is on. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of time for anything other than work at the moment.

In the next couple of weeks things should begin to return to normal, I can’t wait.

State Of Origin 2007

Sport

The Queensland rugby league team have taken home the 2007 State Of Origin title after the second match at Telstra Stadium in Sydney on Wednesday night. In the last 11 encounters at Telstra Stadium, the Queensland team have lost ten times and drawn once; the monkey was finally shaken off the back of Queensland as they won the 2007 State Of Origin series.

The first half was very fast, with next to nothing slowing down the movement of the ball. Only nine minutes into the first half and New South Wales Brett Stewart passes through some soft Queensland defense near the line. Twelve minutes later and Queensland strike back with Greg Inglis scoring a try on the left wing, leveling the scores at six all after a successful conversion. A number of players from both teams left the field with possibly injuries, some returning later in the match. In typical State Of Origin fashion, there was a lot of hard running and big hits. Amazingly, during the entire match no team seemed to have clear offensive dominance, with no major line breaks worth mentioning. At the end of the first 40 minutes of play, the scores were still locked at 6-6.

The second half started with New South Wales clearly increasing the intensity of their running in an attempt to bust through an impressive defensive line from Queensland. The harder New South Wales were running, the more Queensland defenders were entering the tackle to neutralise their offense; even the barn storming Willie Mason had little impact throughout the match against the Queensland defense. With only 15 minutes remaining in the second half, Queensland back Steve Bell charges onto a Thurston grubber to score and take Queensland into a 10-6 lead. From the point on in the game, both teams upped their efforts in offense and defense with the last 3 minutes mandating that everyone be on the edge of their seats.

The winning score for Queensland for the 2007 State Of Origin series was 10-6 and they now enter the third match already having secured the State Of Origin title for 2007.

QUEENSLANDER!