Earlier this month, thousands of customers were up in arms with Foxtel after they were left waiting hours on the phone attempting to cancel their subscriptions.
The surge in cancelation requests came about because the COVID-19 virus has postposed sporting events across the world, including the 2020 NRL and AFL seasons. And with minimal live sport on offer, there is little incentive to stay subscribed to Foxtel, which costs far more than rival online streaming platforms.
To add insult to injury, the COVID-19 virus also shut Foxtel’s call centres in the Philippines, leaving the tidal wave of callers unable to find a customer service representative.
On the Foxtel Complaints Facebook Page, which has nearly 4000 members, one angry customer equated Foxtel’s customer service to Centrelink, in that they have made it deliberately difficult to contact them:
Indeed, IT Wire claimed that Foxtel had deliberately prevented customers from canceling online so that a representative could try to down-sell them to lower-priced subscriptions.
Foxtel’s shambolic customer service has even met the ire of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), whose COVID-19 Taskforce was reportedly flooded with complaints from aggrieved customers:
Customers had complained to the ACCC’s COVID-19 Taskforce, which was established to deal with issues impacting consumers and businesses as a result of the pandemic, about not being able to reach the broadcaster to update their plans.
The watchdog doesn’t disclose how many complaints it received, but says Foxtel, majority-owned by News Corp, has responded by increasing staff to deal with the demand.
“It [Foxtel] has assured the ACCC Taskforce it was urgently increasing call centre capacity which had been shut down because of COVID-19 lockdown measures overseas,” the ACCC statement said.
The irony here is that the heavy loss of revenue from subscribers has forced Foxtel to sack 200 staff, as well as place another 140 on furlough.
Adding customer service capacity, and making it easier for subscribers to cancel, will only accelerate Foxtel’s terminal decline.
