The Greens oppose the CPRS not because it is too weak, but because it will point Australia in the wrong direction with little prospect of turning it around in the timeframe within which emissions must peak, says Senator Christine Milne.
A case of Telstra’s service (or lack of it) being shanghaied
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Have you had the misfortune to contact Telstra customer service of late? I had my mobile (but not my landline/Foxtel/Bigpond) suspended last Thursday, October 15, on a business trip, by Telstra’s own admission, for no logical reason (no money was owing on the account). The customer service officer told me that it may take one day or two days or perhaps two weeks to reinstate the service — after expressing my displeasure (!) it was reinstated in 20 minutes. I arrived in Shanghai on October 17 and the mobile again was suspended. Telstra customer service don’t work on weekends, so yesterday and today I made seven phone calls from China, totalling over 2½ hours, and spoke to more than 20 different customer service reps. The strategies Telstra uses for handling customer complaints seem to be (and note: there is no money owing on my bill — as confirmed also by Telstra):
Every time you call, it takes about 7-10 minutes to be connected to a customer service representative and at every transfer you get the same questions: “What is your number? What is your name? What is your date of birth? What is your billing address? How can I help you?” All these have happened to me in past two days but the phone is still suspended for reasons that Telstra advise it does not understand. You can, of course, complain by email — the automated reply to my complaint included “We aim to respond within two business days however due to a larger than expected demand for our services wait times are currently exceeding four business days.” From previous complaints I sent by email for other problems, Telstra just don’t bother ever replying. Telstra is a total disgrace. |
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19 Comments
I have found that whether it be Telstra, the banks or others, there is no need to go through the endless button pressing that they demand of of us till we give up . Probably their real intention. On about the third button press, yell ” operator, operator ” into the hand piece and lo and behold, you will be connected to one straight away. I do it all the time and have had no trouble. How did I find out ? My university student technology savvy daughter does call centre help desk in her holidays.
I had a similar experience when I moved house and wanted to take my Telstra Bigpond Cable Internet service with me.
I suffered all five steps above, plus another one. A customer lack-of-service rep suggested I call Foxtel! When I protested that Foxtel had nothing to do with my Bigpond internet he insisted.
I was skeptical, especially when he said that Telstra rents its cable from Foxtel (when I know it is the other way around) but desperate, so I called Foxtel. Of course a bemused rep there told me Foxtel had nothing to do with my Bigpond internet.
It took three weeks of this palava before I could finally convince them to send a technician. When he arrived, he identified the problem in seconds as a dodgy Telstra modem. He then proceed to unbox and connect 5 brand new modems before he found one that wasn’t faulty.
I’m finally now connected.
OK
First of all spank Telstra by logging a call to the TIO (Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman) http://www.tio.com.au. Telstra are charged a fee straight up and you have an advocate an INDEPENDENT advocate working on your behalf.
Secondly the call centre for the TIO is in Australia (on Collins Street Melbourne).
I don’t understand why people don’t use the Ombudsman’s set up for Finance, Gov and Telecommunications.
I’ve had dealings with the Banking (now Finance) and Telecommunications Ombusdman and have had satisfactory outcomes both times.
It continues to amaze me that with so many other potential service providers people simply just don’t walk. I did. It’s not so hard.
That is the only way that the message will be received by Telstra management and the other idiots driving similarly poorly customer focussed businesses. Once the cusotmer exodus begins to bite profitability, you can rest assured that each will launch it’s own “customers first” program.
The cycle can be shown to have happened to many other companies.
Sooner or later they will get the message - or their competitors will just crunch them. But, simply put, the onus is on every person who experiences this rubbish treatment to walk their business elsewhere
A bit of advice when this happens and you get a single run-around by a telecommunications company. Contact the TIO (Telecommunication Industry Ombudsman) with all the details and your written complaint. It isn’t fast but very effective.
If this is your honest experience don’t fuck around, go straight to the TIO. They usually directly refer you back to the carrier in the first instance, but you’ll find that carriers who don’t respond to a directive from the TIO get fined… and the longer the issue remains unresolved the bigger the fine - it escalates pretty steeply, pretty quickly. Best way to get results is with a threat to the hip pocket. Bitching and moaning about cruddy service gets nothing done.
A further suggestion, based on my experience, is to seek out the “Disconnections” spokesperson. They seem to have significantly more authority to get things done and to offer refunds for services not delivered.
Jim - I empathise. I could go on for days about all the Telstra stuff ups I’ve had to deal with - I won’t inflict them all on you - but I will tell you my top two.
True story 1 - A few years ago when changing my mobile account from pre-paid to monthly plan with Telstra I asked whether global roaming was automatically transferred - yes, I was told. So off I few to South America only to have no phone reception. To cut a long story short I emailed and rang at least six times in four weeks and kept being told that global roaming was available on my account and should be working - but of course it was not. In the transit lounge in Auckland on the way BACK to Australia I got a text message from Telstra saying ‘welcome to global roaming’. My mobile account is now with another company.
True story 2 - we only have a landline in our flat to enable broadband access so the fussing around with the phone account is completely disproportionate to the degree to which we use the phone - but anyway - in January this year my flatmate decided he would move out in June and so we decided we should get the Telstra landline account changed from his name to mine. Every month we rang and spent at least 15-30mins being transferred, interrogated, told conflicting things and eventually reassured that the account would be in my name on the next month’s bill. It was not. He left the country and the rest of us did not receive a bill for a while so I assumed the name had changed and Telstra had defaulted to quarterly rather than monthly billing. Then the phone was disconnected. I rang Telstra to find out why and it transpired (after a lot of time and transfers) that after six attempts they had in fact changed the bill into my name - but sent the bills to my old address in Hobart instead of my current address in Melbourne - thus because we hadn’t paid the bill for two months they disconnected it! The person who discovered this was very apologetic and was gracious enough to waive the disconnection fee give it was their fault we did not receive the bills for two months - but I still had to pay the two months bills before they would reconnect. I have also been trying to get itemised bills for the same account but that’s another story….
telstra disconnected me without sending a final notice. When I rang I was informed that they had. Never went back
1st one works, also,FOR TELSTRA dial 13220 then press any no, then press hash3 times wait for message, then press hash4 times [no talking or answering]
or 1300361126=techs
QANTAS 131313 HASH 5 TIMES
CBA 132221 THEN 000
AMX 1300132639, THEN PRESS 0 AT EACH PROMPT
they are all on the web, look under’ I want a voice au’
I am 73 ,so if I can find them, so can you !
lilian
Hi John Winter,
Some of us can’t just walk.
We recently moved from Perth to a Yanchep, which is a new new regional centre being built approx 60kms north. We checked that broadband was available prior to committing, as we do work from home and need reliable access. We had a long term relationship with Westnet, and assumed a simple transfer would be possible.
It was only after committing, and actually moving into the new house that we found it was not that easy. Apparently Telstra has an arrangement with the developers in this, and other, new areas where Telstra wire the area and retain exclusive control of the access. Other providers cannot gain access to the area.
And so, we have moved from what in our opinion is the best service provider we have dealt with - Westnet - to Telstra. And am finding it difficult - but cannot ‘just walk’.
I guess you win some, and lose some.
Tip, “all our operators are busy but your call is valuable to us so please hold for a service representative” actually means ‘our customer service is cheap and nasty and we couldn’t give a flying crap about you or your stupid problems.
Answer, as someone suggested above, find another carrier, bank, insurance provider, airline, utility provider, government etc etc
Reality, “think that showed them” ….until you get the same runaround from your new provider.
Seriously, say you had a friend or relative moving to Australia, which telco, bank, insurer, airline, gas, electricity, water provider would/could you seriously reccommend?
Automation means greater profit and poorer service, FULL STOP, THE END.
Tom,
I don’t think you can lump all service providers in the one (poor) basket.
I have over the years had a good run with Westnet as an internet and phone provider, and would recommend them to anybody.
Thank you Lilian. Can you spell out the web address for me as I can’t find it on the info you gave. I’m a bit younger than you so you will understand !!
Horror stories of Telstra stuff ups are legion but from my own experience over the past 20 years, in different parts of Australia, they haven’t been too bad. They are not alone causing distress - anyone who was with AAPT about a year ago when they had some big problems and were uncontactable for about a month would agree. However, just last week we had a query with our Telstra account (they are changing to new billing system) and we told a CSO that we didn’t understand the new accounting arrangement, she replied, neither do we. Great!
Does anyone have a feel-good story about Telstra? I thought not. A few months ago I signed up for a new mobile plan plus free phone and while I was at it asked them to “bundle” all my accounts - thinking that this was the green way to go, saving paper and everyone’s time. The new mobile didn’t work so after three days of being buggered about I demanded another one and hit a brick wall. Straight to the TIO. Definitely the way to go, frightens the hell out of them and a working mobile was handed over.
But then other things started to go wrong. I have two land lines, they were transposed and one was cut off. No house telephone, no fax, no internet - for about a month. And I eventually discovered that my mobile had been put on a $10 plan, costing me a fortune. Back to the TIO, hours on the telephone to call centre drones who could not give a damn, until, after an enraged letter to the entire Telstra Board, I was transferred to some sort of secret major complaints centre where the staff had Fahrenheit IQs.
Now I find, together with many of my neighbours in Ocean Grove, that Internet download speed is all of a sudden crap. My ISP has tried hard to sort out the problem with little success and evidence is growing that Telstra is, again, the cause of a problem. The local exchange is steam driven and all the other hardware outside Geelong is said to have come out on the First Fleet.
We should never have allowed the Industrial Revolution to go ahead.
Umm. Methinks mobile phone usage in China may not just be an issue for Telstra. Comprende?
……………………..
Secondly from the grassy knoll, quite unrelated, a month back I got an offer for $100 plus to carry an advert on my micro blog. Searched the web for background on the company. Many micro bloggers similar experience, but demonstrably not commercial value. What gives? I declined the offer.
Yesterday read a link via crikey to authoritive tech mag long feature with lots of referencing - spooks are rolling out popular culture monitoring on blogosphere. A bit like that fictional character played by Robert Redford in 3 Days of the Condor whose job was to crunch …. popular culture for real intelligence. Just a film script I suppose.
Now ‘I’ve been thinking’ as John Saffran would say, how better than to insert some code obscurely, and willingly accepted, on blogs with pretensions to orginal material, of interest but otherwise of no commercial value?
If you don’t leave Telstra then you have no one to blame but yourself.
Comments are correct - there are no ‘great’ mobile service providers, but your best option is the choice of least pain & suffering.
Tom, not every organisation is hopeless. AAMI are a brilliant motor insurer to deal with. They have their act together and you can talk to a human ! They organise a hire care, and taxis from the repairer to hire car pick up. No complaints at all about AAMI, just seamless, perfect service. Agree Telstra are evil. They are still trying to charge me monthly for internet services for an account cancelled over 12 months ago ! Two previous complaints to the TIO and they still don’t get it. The bills stop for a month or two then start up again. I have changed to Internode for my ISP. They are brilliant. If you are on hold they give you the option of a call back from an operator - who the hell has hours to spend on hold ?