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
Andy Penn became the CEO and Managing Director of Telstra, Australia’s largest telecommunications company, on 1 May 2015. At Telstra Andy is leading an ambitious change program transforming Telstra to be positioned to compete in the radically changing technology world of the future with 5G at its core. Andy has had an extensive career spanning 40 years across 3 different industries - telecommunications, financial services and shipping. He joined Telstra in 2012 as Chief Financial Officer. In 2014 he took on the additional responsibilities as Group Executive International. Prior to Telstra, Andy spent 23 years with AXA Asia Pacific Holdings, part of the AXA Group, one of the world’s largest insurance and investment groups. His time at AXA included the roles of Chief Executive Officer 2006-2011, Chief Financial Officer 2000-2002, Chief Executive Asia and Chief Executive Australia and New Zealand. At AXA, Andy was instrumental in building one of the most successful Asian businesses by an Australian company that was sold to its parent in 2011 for more than A$10bn. Outside of work Andy has a deep passion for the visual arts. He is Patron, on behalf of Telstra, of the National and Torres Straights Islanders Arts Awards (NATSIAA) and he paints in his spare time. Andy is also active in supporting community and social causes. He is Life Governor of Very Special Kids and an Ambassador for the Amy Gillet Foundation. He serves on the advisory boards of both The Big Issue Home for Homes and JDRF. In 2018 he was voted by the Financial Times number 8 in the top 50 male leaders globally in their HEREOS champions of women in leadership report.