💾 Archived View for duncan.bayne.id.au › gemlog › 2023-09-10-tpg-to-aussiebb.gmi captured on 2024-05-12 at 15:05:12. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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Gareth Edwards has an excellent piece on the phenomenon of the "trust thermocline". I mention this because I've been a (mostly happy) TPG customer since 2008, but have just migrated to another ISP. TPG has crossed my "trust thermocline".
Breaching the Trust Thermocline
In most cases, though, the only real solution is to avoid crossing the trust thermocline at all. It requires placing emotional engagement and trust at the heart of product strategy, and accepting that the causes of trust failures are non-linear. Businesses need to address their customers’ complaints early and not dilute the value of their product. Informing users that prices are being increased because new features are available can damage trust if those features weren’t asked for to begin with. Just because a consumer swallows a new charge or price increase doesn’t mean they accept it as necessary.
TPG has offered pretty variable customer support, but - unlike Telstra and Optus - remained contactable during COVID. There was a weird time when I was the only one of my friends who could actually get support from a human being from their ISP, because I was with TPG.
However, my recent interactions with TPG have destroyed any trust and goodwill they built during that time.
1. Lying to me in an effort to get me to purchase a new mobile device. I've received many emails from TPG claiming that w.r.t. the 3G shutdown "We [TPG] believe your mobile service may be impacted due to your location and the device you use, so it’s time to start thinking about upgrading to a VoLTE compatible 4G or 5G device as soon as possible to avoid any interruptions to your service.". When I called, concerned, I was told that this email is sent to all customers regardless of their device or location. It's just a sales scam.
2. Continuing to send these marketing emails, and SMSs, despite me opting out in three different ways: by Web, by SMS, and by calling (several times).
3. When I logged in to check what was going on, I saw that TPG plans to stop providing email, and is encouraging customers to migrate to an email provider who won't even provide pricing information on their service (and who has a shockingly lax privacy policy).
That last point doesn't effect me directly because I'm a (happy, paying) Fastmail customer, but it eroded the last dregs of trust and goodwill I had for TPG.
So after asking around, I decided to switch to Aussie Broadband:
AussieBB has been great - prompt callbacks, knowledgeable support staff (never judge a new vendor solely by their pre-sales), and excellent pricing (slightly more expensive than TPG, but it's true that you get what you pay for).
Of course, TPG has even managed to foul up on the way out the door:
There was also an interesting issue with my routing. I had several ports open with TPG – for Web, Gemini, and OpenVPN. Despite asking AussieBB to open the same ports, nothing was working.
It turns out that despite having restarted the TP-Link Archer router, I *also* had to go into the NAT forwarding settings, click Modify on each, then click Save. Doing that fixed things. Again, AussieBB support was great during this time - testing ports from their end, and unblocking things as required (by default they block most inbound ports, but happily unblock them upon request).
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