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Tesla Names Robyn Denholm as Chairman to Replace Elon Musk

wsj.com

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Re: Tesla Names Robyn Denholm as Chairman to Replace Elon Musk

#81

Post by throwaway0255 »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #28
throwaway0255 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The rest of the board, and supposedly Musk is being replaced to get a little bit more financial responsibility in Tesla. He’s being replaced as consideration for a settlement agreement with the SEC. It seems likely Tesla chose Denholm because they have a bad PR problem, and it will be difficult for media companies to portray her as a villain.

Difficult to portray her as a villain? Telstra is widely regarded as the worst company in Australia to deal with as a residential customer.

I'm referring to the kind of vilification that would cause brand damage for Tesla, so consumer-facing vilification.

Consumer-facing vilification in US media isn't really about what the person has done or what kind of person they are, it's more about what form of caricature can be depicted of them based on racial, gendered, and political stereotypes.

Denholm doesn't fit into a category of race, gender, and political affiliation that easily lends itself to a villainous caricature, and to the contrary does fit into such a category that would make it broadly unacceptable to consumers for a media company to create a villainous caricature of her. In other words, if a media company attempted to do so, it would damage the media company's consumer brand instead of Tesla's. This creates a disincentive protecting Tesla from attacks from media companies (all of which have a great financial interest in oil and legacy automakers, and very little financial interest in Tesla).

This is an increasingly common consideration for organizations responding to or seeking to preempt PR issues, especially for publicly traded companies with consumer brands, and other frequent targets of the media companies (such as police departments, private health insurance companies, and educational institutions).

Re: Tesla Names Robyn Denholm as Chairman to Replace Elon Musk

#82

Post by roenxi »

threeseed wrote: post #17
roenxi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telstra's major asset is a large copper telecommunications network. The government, as a matter of policy, is tearing that network up and replacing it with a publicly owned fiber network. This is not a great situation for Telstra, to say the least. This has been going on for a while, but a hazy memory suggests there have been shenanigans afoot regarding cash compensation for the damage done - that could cause all sor…

Your assessment isn't correct at all. Telstra sold the copper network to NBN in 2014. And NBN isn't replacing that network at all. They are still using it for FTTC, FTTN and FTTB which will make up the large bulk of the NBN rollout along with HFC which they acquired from Optus. And it's widely known in the industry that Telstra is positioning itself to potentially buy back the NBN given they recently split the compan…

> Telstra sold the copper network to NBN in 2014.

Yeah, hence the big cash payout. 2014 is associated with the peak share price by 1-2 years, so they might have been given a big cash infusion, share price jumps, returned it to the shareholders slowly over a couple of years because they specialise in network maintenance which is no longer a competitive advantage.

> They are still using it for FTTC, FTTN and FTTB which will make up the large bulk of the NBN rollout along with HFC which they acquired from Optus.

My parents house was connected to the NBN, their copper landline was disconnected, as was everyone on their street (they had no choice in the matter). And FTTC, FTTN and FTTB all involve ripping a lot of copper out of the ground to be replaced by fiber.

Re: Tesla Names Robyn Denholm as Chairman to Replace Elon Musk

#83

Post by woodandsteel »

threeseed wrote: post #57
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #29

I posted this as a response to another comment, but I think it deserves a top level comment: I just want to chime in here to say: when I recently tried to purchase an iPhone SE from Telstra's online store, the device was out of stock. They couldn't tell me when they expected to have it back in stock, or it was being end-of-lifed. No straight answers. I spent 15 hours, over two weeks, on the phone to Telstra trying to…

I've worked at Telstra so can shed some light on this. 1. Harassing retail staff for what is a corporate process problem is really inappropriate and pointless. I'm not surprised they called the police. Instead you should have called the TIO, ACCC or escalated via email. 2. The customer service issues at Telstra are incredibly deep and complex. It's a 40+ year old company where some of the processes still rely on dot…

>2. The customer service issues at Telstra are incredibly deep and complex. It's a 40+ year old company where some of the processes still rely on dot matrix printers and faxes and there are thousands of IT systems.

The fact that top management has allowed this mess to go on for so long says to me they decided to keep customer service bad because they could make more money that way.

Re: Tesla Names Robyn Denholm as Chairman to Replace Elon Musk

#84

Post by mikekchar »

cptskippy wrote: post #65
justtopost wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts exactly. Telstra is a step below what even Comcast is in the USA. Unless their plan is to ruthlessly extract capitol at the expense of the customer, this is bad signalling at best, and more likely a shift to profit over vision. I'm honestly hoping they fold soon so someone can use the momentum they created as they seem intent on squandering it and their tech. Still waiting for the right to reapir your own…

> I'm honestly hoping they fold soon so someone can use the momentum they created as they seem intent on squandering it and their tech. Tesla folding would be the worse thing that could possible happen for EV adoption. No other successful car company is fully committed or deeply invested in EVs. GM and Nissan are making compliance cars that permit them to continue to make the same shitty ICE cars while still meeting…

> GM and Nissan are making compliance cars that permit them to continue to make the same shitty ICE cars while still meeting fleet emissions standards.

I don't know about GM, but that's incorrect about Nissan (at least in Japan). Nissan has bet big on EV and is bending over backwards to get people to buy them. They built a national recharging infrastructure with Mitsubishi. They offer unlimited charging for $30 per month and even had a promotion where they gave you free unlimited charging for 2 years! If loan money from them to buy a car, they even give you a rate on their EV that's slightly more than half of the rate they offer on their ICE cars.

They are probably doing almost nothing in the US, admittedly (I don't know, as I don't live there). But here in Japan, they are definitely and obviously all in on EV. It will be interesting to see what happens when Toyota and Mazda's joint venture starts producing EV cars (which I think is supposed to be in 2020). At the moment Toyota is crushing everybody (nearly twice as many cars as the nearest competitor) thanks to Prius sales. Once they offer an EV car, things will get interesting in Japan.

Re: Tesla Names Robyn Denholm as Chairman to Replace Elon Musk

#85

Post by tehlike »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #77
tehlike wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least this is rather straight to fix in the us. Not related to the post itself, but in the us you just resolve the issue with your credit card company by filing a dispute.

I did this too. I was advised estimated time to resolve if successful is forty days and dependent on the other party agreeing they’ve made a mistake.

For disputes, the onus is on the merchant to prove they did not make a mistake.
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