MACinations

What is it with the way some companies treat their customers ?   Let me regale you with a tale of one of my favorite companies, Telstra.

Because of their (finally) reasonable plans, I decided to swap my broadband, Foxtel and two iPhone4′s over to the Telstra network.

Their Customer Service was, initially, vastly improved over that experienced in recent years so I thought I’d give them a try – and to a certain extent the improvement is very evident. The Sales staff are helpful and courteous and discussed, at length, my options.

Wanting to be absolutely certain, as I was getting locked into a 2 year contract for by broadband, I made several calls at different times and asked the same questions. 3 calls in all to their Sales team, and THREE DIFFERENT STORIES !

After ascertaining exactly what I wanted, and exactly what I would receive, I signed up. There was some discussion about the “cooling off” period – clarified by speaking to their TIO Complaints people – so I connected;

• 2 x iPhone4′s on the $79/month plan (no coverage from anyone else)
• Home Bundle Ultimate (unlimited calls to any mobile or landline)
• Foxtel through Telstra (thansfered from Foxtel Direct)
• Bigpond ADSL2+ 200Gb plan

Mobiles connected with no issues, ported across from Vodafone. Home phone was already with them so that wasn’t an issue. Foxtel was transferred, although they screwed up the “remote record” option, so no real biggie.

Now we come to the Broadband connection. Both Telstra and my current ISP participate in the “rapid churn” process, whereby you don’t have to cancel one plan and open another – this *could* see you without ADSL at all, owing to the fact that you *may* loose your connection at the exchange.

Here’s the litany of errors that occured after I signed up;

• NO guarantee of the line speed I would be able to achieve (current 8192/384 plan gives me 7000/384 on average), no way of testing it (trial login ??) and no cooling off period if the service is not up to scratch (WRONG !!)
• Told I MUST use the Telstra-supplied modem AND software to connect (WRONG !!)
• Cooling off period starts the day I the order is ACCEPTED into the Telstra system and not at my first login (WRONG !!)
• Every time I started asking BASIC technical questions, despite me telling them that I have been in IT for over 20 years and probably know more than them about network device configuration, I was treated like a complete idiot.

Now as to the order processing itself;

• Order placed on-line on Thursday 29th July. Connection confirmed for the following Tuesday (August 3rd). Sounded about right.
• Received an email the following day saying that, due to the number of sign-ups, connection would be Thursday 5th. OK, I can live with that.
• Called Thursday aftternoon. No, order has not been processed because I haven’t agreed to the Terms and Conditions online for the Rapid Churn. HELLO ??  You didn’t tell me about them !!  Your problem, I’ll agree to them now, I was connection TOMORROW.
• Connection promised for the following Thursday (a week away). Not happy.
• Following Thursday (August 12th) I call up and am told that the order “… hasn’t been picked up by the back office team yet, so it hasn’t been processed”. Cannot explain why, and will not investigate further. Told that “a query” has been raised to find out why it hasn’t been picked up, and “No, you can’t speak to anyone about it – they won’t talk to you”.
• Advised connection should be “around next Monday”. Less than impressed.
• Get a call Saturday afternoon to tell me that the order is being “submitted” now, and that my connection will be Wednesday 18th “approximately”. I express my profound disappointment and ask to be connected by Monday or I will consider cancelling

Here’s the kicker;

• Advised that the “delay” of 3 Business Days is “.. legally mandated by the ACCC, no we can’t bypass it…”. Refuse to put me through to the provisioning team or someone senior enough to confirm this.

Funny that, when I spoke to the ACCC in Canberra today they categorically denied that there was any such legally stipulated delay, and that Telstra were wrong in telling me that.

That was the straw that totally fucked this camel’s back !!

I have HAD IT with these people – yes, there are some very good people there, and I’ve dealt with many of them but there are also some completely useless wastes of space that are obviously taking money under false pretenses. And 99% of these work in the CUSTOMER SERVICE area – how so many people can have so many different definitions of company policies, processes and products is still surprising to me.

The customer doesn’t seem to matter to them. One person in the Provisioning Department in Brisbane (a Team Leader) even said “That’s the way things work, whadda ya want me to do about it” when I asked her to EXPLAIN the delays and WHY my order hadn’t been picked up !! She just had no interest in explaining things, and seemed to think I should accept her word as gospel.

There’s nothing I can do about the iPhone4′s – Vodafone and Optus have incredibly unreliable and sucky coverage in Sydney so I have to stay with Telstra.

Foxtel – well, that’s still under contract until February 2011 and we’re getting a VERY good discount ($42/month inc. an IQ, for a package that has just gone up to $75). Once that’s expired, unless something VERY attractive happens, we’ll probably cancel it and either get a T-Box (VERY doubtful), or something like FetchTV.

Home phone was dropped from the $89.95 Home Phone Ultimate bundle to the $29.95 Home Phone Connect package. More expensive calls, but as we have the Foxtel and mobiles on the same bill we get $25/month credit for calls between all our phones.

Broadband – we’ll stay with Exetel, who we’ve been with for over 7 years. They sell us a reliable connection and a reasonable price, no speed shaping, no counting uploads (double dipping, Telstra ??), and reasonable price per gigabyte if we go over. Support, when it’s necessary, is a little iffy at times, as it’s in Sri Lanka, but I can fix most issues anyway.

220Gb ADSL2+ (20G more than Telstra) for $75/month (Telstra is $69.95 – but ONLY if you have home phone and Foxtel and mobiles with them too, otherwise it’s up to $99.95), plus Telstra shape you to 64k/64k if you go over (useless), where as Exetel charge you the very reasonable $1/Gb (we pay $3/Gb now on ADSL1). And no UPLOADS counted !

I swear, if I could do without the home phone (Naked DSL is not yet available from Exetel, but will in the next 6 months) I’d dump the home phone and pay Telstra NOTHING – use mobiles or VoIP through Exetel ($0.10 untimed to ANYWHERE in Australia, $0.22/30sec to mobiles).

I cannot believe that a company can have so many staff that are such complete idiots that they give different stories every time you call, and LIE to the customers about why things can’t be done.

ACCC was very interested to hear about it, and the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman will be too !

You’ve lost me as a customer, probably forever, Telstra – pity, it looked promising too. Guess you’re still not up to the challenge – God help us if they have a say in managing the National Broadband Network.

We are ALL screwed !!