Not a 4wd story but may be of general interest to those who tour around.
Eastlink is a new tollway in
Melbourne and we find it of marginal value as it saves us approximately 5 minutes on a regular trip for a cost of $2.
We brought a family member a car from a car dealer the other day and entered it on our Eastlink account just before picking it up.
Before handing over the cash, we did a last minute check of Victoria's excellant "Vehicles security register"
which revealed the car was under finnace and the car yard could not legally sell it.
The car yard pannicked as this is there responsibility and said they would sort this out, but after a few days they could not and had to return the car to the finnace company,
losing heavily on it as they paid $600 to get it roadworthy.
In the meantime, they used the car as a runabout and clocked up $13 on our eastlink account, before we removed "the car we never had", from said account.
Then the fun begins, we phone Easlink and it was a bit hard to explain so we dropped into there local office and requested we be returned our $13.
They counter staff were not quite sure of the procedures, but assured us it would be fixed up.
A few days later we checked and it hadn't been fixed.
We tried to get back to the staff member for an explanation only to find out that they only use a central number and it was not there policy to allow direct phone calls to the
shop and the person we dealt with, it took 6 minutes on hold to find this out.
Bit dumb, but oh
well!
I then phoned the central number again and went thru the process with an operator.
He was able to bring up our complaint and, as he also wasn't sure how to reverse out the $13, he got advice from his supervisor.
Advice was that as we had entered the car in the first place, he would not refund the $13, and that we should sue the car yard for it.
You'd have to be joking said I.
The original
shop employee had simply failed to inform us that this was Eastlinks position.
Actually I don't disagree that Eastlink may have had a technical if not moral point to there position but
well really, $13 is hardly worth chasing, and I would have thought a small amount
of business sense would see the $13 be credited back, for goodwill value if nothing else.
They were however constrained by there procedures from doing this (counter staff level).
At this point, I thought its time to make a point, and went thru a written complaint with the Eastlink operator
during which I explained that we have stopped using Eastlink at a cost to them such that they would
loose the $13 in just 48 hrs , so come on guys, get someone with some authority to make a
common sense business descision in your own interests.
Their process is to get back to your complaint within 48 hours, so we will see !
P.S. If you join Eastlink online, don't make a mistake and enter a wrong rego number, cause from their point of view , youre liable.