Telecom’s brand under threat over email outage

23 August 2007

Media Release

Telecom’s iconic brand and status under threat over ongoing email outage

Confidence in the Telecom brand is in serious trouble over persistent difficulties many business customers are having in restoring email services that were turned off by Telecom last weekend, the chief executive of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce Michael Barnett, said today.

Five days after what was meant to be a 24 hour shutdown of Xtra webmail services while the company upgraded 800,000 accounts, the Chamber is continuing to receive calls from members about problems accessing inbox messages and Telecom’s poor response.

“Telecom’s claim last Monday that only 3% of customers were still without a service fails to appreciate the impact the ongoing outage is having on many of the estimated 15,000 customers that 3% represents,” said Mr Barnett. “Many are small-medium businesses who rely heavily on emails as a basic business tool.”

Chamber checks today confirmed that fixing the problem requires a manual re-setting on the businesses computer, which the business owner could do if they knew how or required a computer service specialist to visit the business – “a service the business is expected to pay for.”

“Business deserves a much better attitude from Telecom than it is getting. Telecom is meant to be an iconic brand that customers can trust will be backed with a guarantee to its services. Telecom’s refusal to acknowledge the damage it is causing to its customers shows that the company’s brand no longer represents the service quality it claims it delivers.”

The ongoing outage is the result of an upgrade required for a new Yahoo Xtra Bubble service, a partnership between Yahoo and Telecom, being launched today.

ENDS

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