A great deal of energy is expended by many of the largest business corporations persuading us that they are truly committed to providing excellent customer service.
If my experience is shared by other consumers looking for reasonable service from businesses, then these claims are hokum.

I am writing this from an Australian perspective, so mentioning specific names is pointless, but I will give some examples of what I have experienced.

A large department store chain is struggling to keep pace with its main competitor. The retailing group owning the department store chain is considering selling off the business, since they cannot see the solution to the poor performance. I have shopped at this department store. One time, I found entering the store to be an eerie, almost surreal experience. There were no people. Eventually, a few staff members and customers ambled into view. I asked for directions to find a product, and was told ‘to the left’ with the wave of an arm, and no eye contact.

A little later, I had to wait for the privilege of paying for the item. Staff morale was obviously at rock bottom, and it was no fun to shop there, so people did not bother. Any senior executive could surely have seen and sensed what I did. Too obvious, I guess.

The telephone company had a promotion which involved telemarketers calling and offering a deal that included a free cell phone. When I received the call, the telemarketer was based offshore, and had a heavy accent. To make matters worse, the telephone line was appallingly bad – I could barely hear what was being said. When I said I did not want a free cell phone the telemarketer demanded to know why not. I ended the call as politely as I could. For a telephone company to market its services over poor phone lines with a telemarketer who wants to argue with potential customers simply defies belief.

I was in one of our major banks, and overheard some conversation from the staff behind service desk. One of the staff, obviously experienced, was dealing with what appeared to be a young customer. She seemed flustered. When the ‘customer’ left, her colleague leaned over and said ‘that was a shopper’, to which she replied ‘I thought so’. The shopper was a phantom customer, used by the bank to check if the staff members followed the prescribed formula to deal with a customer. This branch of the bank dealt with customers who were both wealthy and of advanced age, some a little eccentric. To use the formulaic approach would risk driving them away.

We humans are a gregarious species. We enjoy communicating with our fellows - we need to be needed. We are hard wired to cooperate, so helping one another should come naturally. But no, decision makers, out of touch with day to day life, seem to come up with formulas to better what we do naturally. As I said at the start – hokum.

Debt Consolidation is the process of bringing together ones debts from various sources, amalgamating or consolidating them into one single debt usually at a lower rate of interest. The resultant single debt is also known as a debt consolidation loan.

This process of debt consolidation has become very popular in the recent times because of the flexibility and simplicity it offers to the takers. Debt consolidation becomes an irreplaceable tool when an individual or business is indebted by high interest loans and is interested in replacing them with a debt consolidation loan that carries a lower interest rate. Debt consolidation has also become popular because of the ease in making one payout instead of many which can again be negotiated to be weekly, fortnightly or monthly.

Debt consolidation involves very common debts like credit cards, mortgages, student loans etc. The most common of these is credit card debt since this debt carries a very prohibitive rate of interest usually nearing 20% p.a.

Debt consolidation has become popular in Australia since Australia has always been known for its high interest credit cards. An Australian holding two or three credit cards being charged at about 20% p.a., would only be happy to manage and consolidate his owing at 7-10% interest bearing debt consolidation loan. Not only, would he would save a lot of money in the process, he will have lesser monthly payments to bother about.

Debt consolidation works with almost all kinds of loans available in Australia today. Another reason why debt consolidation has caught on in Australia is because of the highly competitive marketplace with products having extremely higher rates of interest.

Debt consolidation in Australia is still growing in popularity, since the number of lenders is on the rise. Australians with loans taken at higher rates of interest are replacing them with lower interest ones making use of the “honey-moon period” bearing further lower interest rates to pay off the old debts.

The awareness of the advantages of debt consolidation has become wide-spread especially in regard to:

Negotiating with their creditors for paying less,
Getting a debt Consolidation Loan,
Going thru the debt agreement with a magnifying glass in case of trouble

Debt Consolidation loans available in Australia are of various kinds and are widely classified as per objectives. They are debt consolidation, mortgage consolidation and bill consolidation. As the types signify a normal debt consolidation loan is used to pay off personal debts like personal loans and credit cards. A mortgage consolidation deals with getting all your housing debt under one loan thereby reducing mortgage payouts and offering flexibility of a negotiated and single payment. Bill consolidation on the other hand deals with a loan that amalgamates all due bills into one single loan and again offers the flexibility of negotiated and lesser payouts.

In case of need, the advice is to do your calculations and shop for the best debt consolidation loan and options in the market before deciding on one. Various lenders offer various sops from time to time. It is up to you how you can turn them to your advantage.