Slingshot's hard-sell tactics cause elderly alarm

The Slingshot building on Symonds St. Photo / Janna Dixon.

Phone and internet company Slingshot has overhauled its cold-calling approach after complaints about sales to elderly customers.

Former staff at the call centre hired to sell Slingshot accounts say low wages and performance targets mean they have to "push the line" to sign up customers.

They claim to have signed up people for internet packages even though they did not have computers, and to have sold broadband deals in areas where the phone network can only handle dial-up speeds.

Cold-calling sales company Power Marketing has played a big role in Slingshot's staggering growth, adding more than 80,000 customers to the company's books in just two years. That growth is believed to have caused a backlog at Slingshot's customer service and technical support lines.

Hundreds of upset Slingshot customers have written to the Herald on Sunday after a story revealed a four-hour wait on the phone for technical support.

Among the letter writers are the adult children of elderly customers, who claim their parents were signed up for Slingshot accounts without being aware what they were doing.

A former staff member of Power Marketing also told of the sales techniques that boosted Slingshot's position.

The former worker supplied documents showing that staff faced disciplinary proceedings from Power Marketing if they did not make enough sales each hour. The documents also showed many staff were paid the minimum wage but their pay packets were bumped up by sales commissions.

"If you're not hungry for the sale, then you will go hungry," said one former staff member.

Former staff said there was pressure from Slingshot and Power Marketing to keep sales practices ethical. But one former salesman said: "The line between pure sell, harassment and pressure is real thin."

The sentences and phrases used by sales staff were all scripted, along with scripts to overcome objections that customers might raise.

Staff selling phone and internet packages with Slingshot and its parent company CallPlus were told to avoid asking questions such as, "How's the service?" An instruction sheet says: "These all force the person to think too much."

Some staff said elderly customers were targets for sales. "A lot of old people live by themselves and they just want someone to talk to," said one.

A number of staff said the commission structures included a $2 payment for signing customers up to Slingshot's free dial-up internet service. The sales team went through a period of signing up everybody they could to dial-up - even if they didn't have a computer, they said.

Staff said they also went "to the line" when cold calling into areas that did not have effective broadband - including Stewart Island, Ruatoria and Picton. They would enter the details of a prospective customer into an online tool that estimated broadband connectivity. In cases where it was described as "limited", they would continue to sell to the customer.

"What we would do to get the numbers up was sign them up. People were saying, 'How come Slingshot can provide it when Telecom can't'?"

Staff said they had moved on to work for other call centres, which snapped them up because they had Power Marketing on their resumes.

"Some of these young guys could talk you out of every bit of money you have," said one.

Slingshot denies using the hard sell:

Quality is the critical factor in any sales call, says Power Marketing boss Paul Ross. And the Slingshot executive who hires the firm - CallPlus chief executive Mark Callander - agrees.

He said there was no clause in the contract between the companies specifying the number of sales to be made.

Callander said the company arranged recently for all sales involving customers born before 1941 - aged 70 or older - to be handled directly by Slingshot.

That decision was made after receiving a high number of complaints from that demographic. "People over a certain age were having trouble understanding what was going on through the process," he said.

"We were concerned about the complaints we were getting."

He said the company had reviewed recordings of the sales and often found no problems.

Monitoring found prospective elderly customers would agree to purchase certain plans - only to later object or have family object.

Callander said he would not endorse sales tips that discouraged customers from "thinking" but was happy with the way Power Marketing represented CallPlus and Slingshot.

He rejected claims by sales staff that customers without computers were signed up for dial-up internet, saying commission payments were made only when accounts were activated - something that could not be done without a computer.

Paul Ross said elderly customers "only retain so much" and didn't know the questions to ask.

Sales staff signing up broadband customers in areas with limited connections were monitored and customers were told broadband speeds would be "limited".

All sales calls were followed by a verification call, Ross said, in which a staff member checked against guidelines including terms and conditions, the package being sold and the customer's understanding that the sale was made by Slingshot.

He said the company had sold about 80,000 Slingshot accounts over two years, with "minimal" complaints.

Complaints about sales given the cold shoulder:

When Clara Wilson hung up the telephone after talking to the willing salesman, she believed Telecom had rewarded her years of loyalty with a special deal.

In fact, it was a Slingshot cold call that secured Wilson's phone and broadband business.

Daughter Julia Wilson was among a group of people who wrote to the Herald on Sunday complaining about the way Slingshot had dealt with their elderly parents.

Julia Wilson said her mother believed she was getting "a better plan with Telecom". The sales call was made on April 12. The realisation that the call was from another provider came a few days later and by April 19 her services had returned to Telecom.

Then a bill from Slingshot arrived for $322.27. Phone calls and written complaints seemed to do little - there was no response from the company until Julia Wilson emailed chief executive Scott Page last month - and copied in the Herald on Sunday.

She has since spoken to Page but has yet to receive a formal response to her complaint. She has now complained to the Commerce Commission. And her request to Slingshot: "Please give my mother a fair deal."