The Repair Man

I am in a bit of a quandry today, b/c while I want to keep going sequentially, I've just reported Telstra to the Ombudsman and had them respond by cutting off my account, and telling me it will take a week before someone will even try to fix it. I also posted this blog link on a Facebook page ( there's a ton called 'I hate Telstra or similar, this is the biggest one ) and had a Telstra employee tell me that he assumes their service has improved since the 1990s, when this blog starts. No, I'm afraid not. It just gets worse. I am going to stick to the sequential format, and hopefully I'll have an outcome on this latest debacle by the time I post about it.

We moved in to our current home about 6 years ago, I believe. After about 3 years, we had a major rain storm, and then our phone started to play up. It sounded like it was under water, funny enough. So, we called for a technician. We had a broken phone for a fair time, then one Sunday, I looked out of my window and saw a Telstra truck. I figured he'd come and knock on the door soon enough, so I kept doing what I was doing. When I next looked, he was gone, and the entrance to my garage was blocked by a hole in the ground ( not a massive chasm, but a hole, nonetheless ). I went inside and grabbed my phone to call and complain, and it was now not working at all. It started to work again, the next day, and it was fixed from there.

I contacted Telstra to complain that their service staff come on to my property, dig a hole, leave it, break my phone altogether for a time, and don't even speak to me. A few weeks later, I proceeded to complain that there was still a hole in my yard, and that we could not use our garage.

They responded to tell me that an investigation had revealed that the line was broken because I'd been digging around it, which meant I was liable to pay for the repair. My response was two fold:

1 - so the person I complained about is assumed to be totally honest in making a counter accusation against me ? ( this is also the issue I'm currently facing with lying staff in Telstra stores )

2 - I've never dug anything up anywhere near my shed.

This went back and forth for a time. I pointed out that I am not a cripple, I am quite capable of filling in the hole in my yard, but that I didn't, precisely because I know how Telstra operates, and if I clean up after them, they'll use it to blame me for interfering with the lines. They did not care, they kept sending bills.

In the end, I realised that when we moved in, the settlement was held up as the previous owner had never got council approval for the shed, and he'd been made to come out and dig up the footings so they could be inspected. This happened while I did not own the shed, or the house, and I did not do it. I wrote and made this clear, and got back a letter telling me that Telstra did not absolve me of blame, or accept any blame, but would not be pursuing the bill. In any case, I'm not sure how digging done before we bought the house, broke the lines 3 years later.

The guy came back shortly after and filled in the hole. He did not let us know he was here, I just found the hole filled.

The Broadband Connection

A few years after my mobile phone experience, I was working in my first programming job. Broadband was pretty new, especially in Tasmania. I'd held off for a year or so, but in the end, I decided I had to bite the bullet, swallow my pride, and get a Telstra service. They were my only option at the time ( you'll see this is a recurring theme ). So, I called them and booked for them to set it up. I got a message to call them urgently. I called, they asked for my password. I said 'what password ?'. They said they needed to know my password to know what was wrong with my application, or they could not help me. I said I didn't need their help, I didn't have a problem, barring that I wanted broadband. I thought hard and remembered my old password was 'coffee'. They proceeded to tell me they could not connect me to broadband until I paid the $500+ I owed on my old phone account ( the one where they billed me after I disconnected ). I explained to her that it was all a lie, and I thought they had given up on it. They said no, in fact, they had a private investigator trying to find me after I did not appear for my court date. Remember how I moved house, and they didn't set my fax up right ? Well, it appears they have no records kept of when I told them I moved, and so when they got to the point of sending a summons, they sent it not to my PO Box, but to the house I no longer lived in.

Here's where it gets weird. I said to the woman, we are the only Graus family in Tasmania. They print the phone book. How can they claim they needed a PI, and how could both Telstra and the PI be so worthless as to not think of looking in the phone book to find me ?

Anyhow, I explained why I was not paying, and the woman responded to tell me that I could pay at any post office. I mostly just laughed at this point. I did some investigating, and the statute of limitations on a bill like this is 5 years. It was four years old at the time, so I just waited for that time to pass. I've since paid bills at Telstra offices and seen that the bill in question still shows up on their system, maybe that's why they treat me so badly, because obviously almost anyone who sees that will have no idea what happened, and will just assume I am a deadbeat. $500 is not a lot of money to me nowadays, but I could have had my work pay for it back then, it's not really the point. The principle is that they lied, they tried to steal from me, and I refused to be intimidated.

I stuck with dial up and about 6 months later got an Internode ADSL connection. Internode are awesome, I love them, I'd be with them today if I had the option.

The Mobile Phone

As I already mentioned, my sales job in the 90s wanted me to have a mobile, but would not provide one. So, I bought one, and I'd get sent a bill every month, which I'd then send to the company. The bill was $500+ a month, as I was the sole employee in my state, I spent a lot of time on the road, and on the phone. I got a call one day from Optus. They gave me a new Erikson digital phone if I'd swap to them. Now, this is the days before plans and so on, this was so amazing to me that I pulled over to clarify. Then, I said yes. I called Telstra and told them I wanted to disconnect my service, and they accepted my disconnection request.

I worked in Tasmania, and I had to get the bills, send them to Melbourne, and then my boss would, once a month, send them to Sydney to get paid. On that basis, I frequently got second notices, etc. I got a disconnection notice about 6 weeks later. I called and said something along the lines of "As I've explained before, I have no control over the payment process and it can be slow, but you will get paid. I still found it funny that you'd threaten to disconnect a line that is not connected". They informed me the line WAS connected. I was on a plan where I prepaid $500 a month in order to get a better call rate, a casual plan would have cost $1000 a month or more. I asked why they thought I was paying $500 for connection when I was not using my phone, and they indicated they did not care.

For the next few months, I was getting angry bills and threats in my PO Box. I talked to my boss about it. They would have paid, but I refused to pass it through on principle. I disconnected the line, it was clear from looking at the situation that I believed it to be disconnected, and I was not paying. After quite a few months, they stopped contacting me. This was when I decided to never use a Telstra service again. Sadly, over time, I found I had no choice but to reconnect to Telstra, but that's another story.