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| God I hate calling Telstra |
How can one telco incite so much dislike (was going to say hatred) actually I will say hatred, from the population at large?
Well it's simple I think .. they are indifferent to you.
Your call is important to us! Rubbish! If it was you would answer the phone!
You have been placed in a priority queue! Rubbish! Being in a queue is not giving me priority!
Please say what your call is about. (Asked by a robot) I want to talk to a human!
And on it goes...
Press 1 for this, press 2 for that.. what number do I press for "Get stuffed you uncaring bastards?"
No matter what they say.. they don't give a stuff about you!
You are just a number to them. (Your account number in case you rare wondering)
And I will give you a couple of examples:
When we moved Deb's shop to Clayfield we had a divert put on the phone number. This is a fixed fee for a year (fair enough) and must be renewed. So.. at the end of the year, somehow the charge for the divert was given its own separate account number and sent.. to the old shop.
Except it was sent to the wrong address at the old shop.
So Telstra don't get paid, we don't know we have a bill to pay and on it goes. Now most sensible companies would get on the phone and say.. "Hey we have an outstanding invoice here!"
Nope...no such luck! They couldn't do that because they actually had our phone number incorrect too!
So naturally they gave the matter to Dunn and Bradstreet who started to harass Debra for the payment. I intervened and said.. send us a copy of the bill and if it is for us.. we will pay it. They would not tell us who the bill was from, they demanded a stack of Deb's personal details and on it went. Eventually they told us it was from Telstra. I rang Telstra (to an offshore operator who couldn't understand me) to be told our account was up to date.
Next step was the Telecommunication ombudsmen who instructed some bimbo from Telstra to call us. She was aggressive on the phone because we had called on the TIO and was "not particularly helpful." (I am being mild here) The entire thing started again.... God give me strength!
Eventually.. we got a copy of the bill. Just marked to Debra Taylor, Shop 14, One Park Road Milton. (We were in shop 13) But nobody could identify the phone number or the account number. Now we're talking about a $187 bill here.
So.. I managed to get to the bottom of all of this crap. Nobody could understand why a simple charge on a phone bill would be removed from the bill, placed on another bill (with its own account number) and sent to the wrong address with the incorrect phone number.
No apology from Telstra (well why would they care.. they have gazillions of customers) none from Dunn and Bradstreet (they had reduced Deb to tears) and after 3 months.. the problem was sorted.
Peace from Telstra.
(Apart from their annoying salesman who wants to sell us a new plan. He eventually stopped when i threatened to insert a phone into him!)
And then we get the June phone bill from Telstra.
Amount looks about correct.. but it arrives 2 days after payment is due!
So.. Debra rings them... they graciously give us an extra two weeks to pay. (Good on them... not OUR fault, they got the bills out late)
A week later the overdue notice arrives. (We still have 7 days grace here) So I pay the bill. A few days later the next bill arrives still showing the outstanding amount.. and a $15 late fee!
So what is it with these dick heads? Why has so much stress come into our lives when we need to talk with somebody at Telstra. And just why do we need to talk to somebody in a bloody call centre offshore?
Why can't we have Australians working for Telstra.. people who can help us when we need to contact them?
So Telstra.. you won't be getting your $15 and I might just send you a bill for an hour of my time being stuffed around by your uncaring system!
Oh... I will be looking for two new iPhones in October... sorry.. no way Jose.
As Doc Neeson said... "NW/GS/FO!"
