14 DAY TRIAL // Vodafone Australia has terminated business relationships with one of its primary dealers after evidence showed the company engaging in unethical business practices and violating customer privacy.
The Sydney Morning Herald recently obtained internal emails from Communications Direct Pty Ltd, a company priding as Vodafone's "largest premium partner," which showed senior managers instructing employees to impersonate customers and exploit the dealer's privileged access to the operator's database.
According to a report in the newspaper, Comms Direct engaged in all sorts of dubious practices, one of them called "Siebel farming," after the name of the customer relationship management (CRM) application used by Vodafone.
Siebel farming involved Comms Direct staff searching the operator's database for customers whose contracts were about to expire and calling them to offer better deals.
If they agreed, the company's employees called Vodafone's hotlines and impersonated them in order to cancel their contracts before signing them up for new ones.
The purpose of this was to earn higher commissions, as the payout for new contracts is double the one for renewals.
In some cases, however, the company's staff failed to get the old contracts terminated and customers were left with two monthly bills.
Another way to earn commissions is to convince customers to sign up for additional numbers, even if they remain unused.
In order to meet monthly targets, Comms Direct employees added numbers to people's contracts without their knowledge, a practice known as "SIM stacking." In one case, when a customer enquired about the 11 additional numbers he never asked for, he was told that they were for spare.
There is also evidence to suggest that some employees engaged in illegal activities. For example, the active month call history of a customer was sent outside the company to a hotmail address.
On Friday, Vodafone terminated its dealer agreement with Communications Direct citing breach of contract. Today, the former dealer fired its 40+ employees and shut down its website.
The Sydney Morning Herald has forwarded the evidence to the New South Wales Police, who, after analyzing it, concluded the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) is more entitled to look into the matter.
Meanwhile, Vodafone is being investigated by the Australian Privacy Commissioner's Office for possible data protection law violations after it was revealed that unauthorized people used dealer usernames and passwords to access private customer details.