Making the right calls for customers
I am pleased to say we are changing two pricing decisions which we announced recently around international roaming and charges for paper bills.
Good leadership means recognising when it is right to change decisions because it is the right thing for our customers.
Price increases are often necessary and I completely understand why the teams that look after our products made the changes they did. But they didn’t sit well with me, customers clearly told us the same so it’s my responsibility to act on behalf of our customers.
The first is international roaming charges. Telstra has worked hard at removing the pain point of International Roaming charges with the introduction of Travel Passes that make using a mobile overseas more affordable and predictable.
So we will scrap a proposal to increase the excess data fees on our Travel Passes from 3c to 10c per MB while keeping the new passes that increase data allowances by 50 per cent and greatly increase the number of participating countries. This makes our Travel Passes very convenient and Telstra competitive as a roaming choice.
Secondly, we will remove the proposal to have people charged a flat rate on paper bills regardless of whether they were only receiving those bills via mail and/or paying those bills over the counter. We will charge $2.20 to receive a paper bill and separately, $1.00 for each over the counter payment made. This allows us to recoup costs and avoids the need to charge everyone for a service which a minority of our customer base continues to use. These are equivalent to or better than competitor charges and below various other non-telco organisations. We will also rebate the difference to customers charged the $3.20 fee, where applicable.
Making life as easy as possible for our customers is my number one priority as CEO. We need to run a successful business and price increases need to occur. At the same time, we need to carefully weigh up those changes with customer expectations.
So on behalf of the team, I hope these decisions are recognised as our continued commitment to our customers.
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The Author
Andrew Penn became Chief Executive Officer on 1 May, 2015 after serving as Telstra's Chief Financial Officer and Group Executive International. Andrew is an experienced senior executive with a career spanning more than 30 years. Prior to joining Telstra, Andrew was with AXA Asia Pacific for 20 years where he held a number of positions including Group Chief Executive (2006-2011), Chief Executive Officer for Australia and New Zealand, Group Chief Financial Officer, Chief Executive for Asia and spent time based in Australia, Hong Kong, Thailand and Indonesia. Under Andrew’s leadership AXA built a successful Asian platform, which was sold to its parent company in 2011 for $10.4bn. In addition to his business activities, Andrew has contributed widely to not-for-profit and community organisations. He is Life Governor and Foundation Board member of Very Special Kids. He is also a member of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Advisory Council, The Big Issue Advisory Group, and an Amy Gillet Foundation Ambassador.