Telco TPG is riling its customers with the unthinkable threat to turn their ‘free’ in-house email address into a paid one, where they risk losing archived emails and all their contact details with the change. Apart from those panicking about being allegedly bullied because they want to keep the current free arrangement rather than move over to a paid one, I feel for David Lee Smyth, who’s the bearded guy who has become famous in the iiNet advertisements.

You see, TPG owns several brands. It built TPG by acquiring a host of other telcos, including Vodafone, Internode, AAPT, Lebara and felix. And it owns iiNet that has given us the very friendly helpful Smyth, who in a sense was the human face of a telco brand, the likes of which you don’t see with Telstra or Optus.

This guy (who looks trustworthy) has been good for a brand that has appealed to small businesses and those who’ve been burnt by their experiences of big business telcos. But now the customers are so cranky that many are complaining to the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) and the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman.

What are they complaining about? Well, this is how the AFR’s Jenny Wiggins explains it: “TPG, which manages hundreds of thousands of email accounts under several brands including iiNet, has upset customers by giving them just less than two months to transfer their accounts to a third party, The Messaging Company. If customers do not transfer, the accounts will be suspended and eventually deleted.”

Imagine losing your email address! You can see why many TPG customers would be up in arms and could even be wondering who The Messaging Company is. The AFR says the affected email users feel they’re being held to ransom over TPG’s direction and are looking for consumer protection from the ACCC.

TPG says it will pay for 12 months of service when its customers transfer to The Messaging Company, but then it’s likely they’ll be forced to pay after that. How much customers would be charged to use their service after September 2024 isn’t clear at this stage.

The ACCC hasn’t yet pronounced its view on the matter but has made clear a few issues. First, businesses that promise to provide a service and fail to do so could be breaking a consumer law. Second, contracts shouldn’t be unfair. And third, they shouldn’t be able to vary the contract and threaten to withdraw the service that was the basis of the contract.

Clearly, TPG has initiated the transfer of its email accounts to The Messaging Company for rational economic reasons that suit the future prospects of their business. But right now, their customers aren’t happy with their actions.

“From the day we contact customers, we are providing seven weeks for them to opt in to retain their email service, free-of-charge until 15 September 2024,” a TPG spokesman told the AFR.

Right now, it isn’t clear whether TPG has done anything legally wrong, but they certainly have annoyed their customers. And this incident that has gone public won’t be great for its brands. That’s something that most business-building experts would argue is a very wrong play for an operation that has built its reputation by looking more accessible and consumer-friendly than its rivals.

The big lesson for all of us in a consumer world where we sign up for a service that bills us monthly is to read the contracts and keep on top of what money that disappears from your bank account or via your credit card on a too regular basis.