So, here we are again, wasting time. To be exact, wasting time writing about how mobile communication operators (MCO’s) waste our time. As always, there is someone getting screwed, and this time it is Tre Italia who is doing the screwing.
It has been six weeks since Angela woke to the shock of the month. Logging on to check her Internet usage with Tre mobile Internet one morning, she discovered she had run up a bill of €131, way in excess of her 19 Euro monthly flat rate. Usually careful to frequently check her usage, she struggled to remember how she could have run up such a bill.
Angela, who lives in Salerno, is one of an increasing number of business people who use Tre’s USIM data card for HDSP mobile Internet access. For 19 Euro a month she receives 5GB of traffic (total, for both up and down), at speeds of around 80Kbps, which, as mobile Internet goes, isn’t bad. However, Tre charges 20 cents per megabyte if you exceed your usage quota, which wouldn’t be so bad if you actually knew what your usage was.
To monitor usage, Tre provides a software panel installed locally on your PC, which (theoretically) shows how much you are using in real-time. However, by Tre’s own admission, this local metering is not reliable and advises customers to check their usage directly via their account on Tre’s website. Yet, though Tre claims that the meter on the website is accurate, it isn’t, as both Angela and I discovered recently whilst checking her account.
The story on Tre’s website is the by now familiar story: it often does not work. Well, to be accurate, only the client log-in area often doesn’t work. The rest of the site, which is concerned with selling you something, works fine. If you try to log-in to your account it can take up to 3 attempts to get in and even then the client area is often either down or “in allestimento” – something which frequently (and suspiciously) happens at the end the month when everyone needs to check their usage. Once you do get in though, checking your detailed usage is a nightmare, and about the only thing that is straightforward to check is the actual over-all usage.
However, as we discovered, the online meter showing the total monthly usage is in fact inaccurate, contrary to Tre’s claim. This is a serious, because it means there is no reliable, independent way for the customer to check usage. The only way to do so, apparently, is to call Tre’s Customer service phone line.
But incredibly, even this measure does not guarantee an accurate usage report. We discovered as much when, after noting that the online meter had not changed in several days, we called Tre’s customer service and spoke to an operator. We were very surprised indeed when the operator gave us the same reading as the one we could see on the website. Yet Angela knew that she had used several hundred megabytes since that reading was first seen by her a few days earlier. Being close to the end of the month this was indeed worrying, since she only had a few hundred megabytes left as part of the traffic included in the 19 Euro quota.
When this was pointed out to the customer care operator the response was somewhat incredible, though not quite unexpected. Tre can “only give us the information it just gave us” (which we knew already); and yes, Tre can confirm that there is a problem with the online meter. The really exasperating part , however, was that no attempt was made to acknowledge that the customer should not be held responsible for any usage over the limit when Tre is unable to provide neither a reliable online usage check, nor a live customer-care check. The only recourse we were offered was a fax number (800 179 600) with vague instructions to send a letter detailing our complaint. Which, you guessed it, means even more time wasting.
The up shot of all this is that not only does Angela possibly face a huge bill yet again, but that she has to waste time – probably hours, if not days – if she wants to get Tre to acknowledge their responsibility in the matter – if at all. The situation is all the more incredible when one thinks that while offering cutting edge mobile communications, Tre can’t do something as as simple as keeping accurate track of customer usage.
Which makes one wonder whether an ethos of shoddy service provision is deliberately encouraged by large companies like Tre so as to get customers to use more of their services. Moreover, the lack of adequate and competent customer services belies another suspected ethos: that of deliberately frustrating customers when they try to redress an issue. Therefore, Angela’s choice is either to waste time and get frustrated pursuing the issue; or to cut her losses and resign herself to paying for more than she uses, simply so as to get on with her life.
This story is by now a very common and familiar one in Italy. Service providers provide services that end up causing the customer extra expense and/or wasted time, not to mention headache. It really is time that the consumer was treated better than this. Unfortunately, that may not happen for a long time, since at the end of the day Italian companies have the customer by the short and curlies to the point that even if the customer complains or changes provider he will still face the same treatment wherever he goes.
Perhaps, though, the only true solution is a change in the ethical practices of large companies. Dare we ask if there are any, nay, even just one, conscientious, honest and ethically driven CEO out there who’d like to be the first to set an example? We’ll all love you for it, and we’ll stampede our way to your shops in droves to sign up for service.
We would be interested to hear of anyone’s experiences with Tre, other MCO’s and any service provider in Italy. Please either email to info@vietri.it or leave a comment.
Information
- Until March 2008, Tre did not have a free customer call centre for customer telephone queries and assistance. The only provision was a premium line which cost several euro per call. Tre was forced to provide a free line when the Italian parliament ruled that the MCO was obliged to do so under EU directives. The number, 800 17979 is free, but only available between 0800 – 2400.
- Tre charges 19 Euro a month including VAT for a USIM HDSP modem with 5GB of traffic (total, both ways) for private users. For businesses this increases to 5GB per week. Usage outside of the quota through Tre’s network is charged at a fairly expensive rate 20 cents per MB, and an exorbitant 60 cents per MB through other operators when Tre’s network is not available. Moreover, access through other operators is not HDSP, but the much slower GPRS, making the 60 cents charge outrageous.
- The customer is not advised of the switch between networks (for example, while travelling around) and can only find out by clicking the Tre connection panel on the PC desktop.
- Metering of data usage locally on the user’s PC is very unreliable and misleading. It almost always underestimates usage, leading unsuspecting customers to believe that they have more usage left than is actually the case.