Taking the opportunity to revive this thread as suggested by @handypoint and @Bacchusfox
Also to say what annoys me MORE is the fkg ATO while on hold to them for over 95 minutes now. The work experience student can’t answer the questions so is trying to find his supervisor.
They sent SIX letters timed to arrive just at Christmas. We have no option but to pay super but then they say you are not allowed to pay super any more so cop this fine. Four of the letters say you need do nothing - just let the super fund handle it. Another two letters say you have to pay us in a couple of days or we will whack you again. The work experience student and his manager can’t say which of those is correct, so they transferred me to another department where I am waiting for an extra 30 minutes.
Every couple of minutes a recorded message come on where the ATO lies to me that the call will be answered by the nextrepresentative work experience student.
Im actually going to stand up for the staff a little here.
The ATO outsources its call center, i have worked in operations for outsources including a goverment agency.
Outsources are incredibly under trained, under resourced, under staffed and under paid.
They are also heavily restricted with what they can access and what they do. Often the best line of help is simply “email this internal team” and the issue sits there for weeks. They are incredibly shackled.
Its a very broken system, as easy as it is to blame the staff 90% of the time they are working the best they can with the shackles they have on them. The blame lies entirely with the agency who takes the short cuts of outsourind proceeds to shackle them
Does ATO also outsource their websites and documentation?
There are many mutual contradictions in both.
These bastards are bringing in billions of dollars from taxpayers and (if you are correct) funnelling it into the pockets of multinational corporations who do an absolutely ■■■■ job.
And FYI it takes two weeks for a letter to get from ATO based in Albury to Perth, so goodness knows how much longer to get somewhere more distant. FFS ATO is part of the federal fkg govt! How hard would it be for them to get documents printed out at one of their offices in capital cities? Surely even these farkwits have heard of the internet by now,
So by the time their letter arrives by the Australia Post carrier pigeon “service” the poor old taxpayer has only 2 days to pay up or else cop further slugs. Even though their demands are contradictory and can’t be resolved by their Serco work experience flunkies.
And meanwhile the taxpayers are also paying for how many ATO flunkies sitting on their arses in Canberra and Albury/Wodonga ignoring all these problems?
Its not just the ATO ethier, the NDIS call center is outsourced to Serco. Has been since about 2018ish and they just renewed the contract for a further 3 years.
Haven’t been around the call center industry for years but having been involved in the back of house operations in particular with outsourcers and very much in particular with government contracts in brutal.
Turnover is incredibly high meaning you are constantly churning out new staff that need to be trained and looked after (speed to competency is well over 3 months, sometimes its closer to 6).
Absences are horrendous, even on agood day your copping 25% of your staffing calling in sick.
There is next to no growth, any good staff they do luck out and get just leave.
They are often entry level roles with targets set on number of bums on seats, you don’t often get the best level of candidates coming through but you have to put them on to meet targets
Thanks. I already went to the MP after the same thing happened last year. I put it to her that the arrangement whereby every person not in the MEL-SYD-BRI axis could be disadvantaged by having a slow mailout from Albury with only 2 days to react was very discriminatory.
She basically said “Not my problem - sort it out yourself”.
