Thread: Troubles with Telstra

Having worked for them, I would not use Telstra if you held a gun to my head - were I to treat a dog the way Telstra treats it's staff I would be in jail.

Iinet are a serious alternative to Telstra, inspite of the issues they have had since being taken over by TPG they are still great.
The other advantage of Iiinet is that many staff (I know this because I worked for them too) are cross trained in tech and billing and can handle both queries, but even if you get a tech only rep, all iinet staff have credit/refund authority up to $50 and the team leader sitting ten feet away has a $500 authority.

My latest bill came through the other day and good news. all the credits have been applied and the wifi broadband has been removed from the bill. Too bad it took 3 months to fix a simple problem.

Originally Posted by Grumpy John

My latest bill came through the other day and good news. all the credits have been applied and the wifi broadband has been removed from the bill. Too bad it took 3 months to fix a simple problem.

Great news John... I'm still awaiting TPG to fix my internet.
I had a phone call yesterday saying it'd been escalated and a tech would call me between 10 & 11am today and again nothing.
Cheers, Peter

Originally Posted by crowie

Great news John... I'm still awaiting TPG to fix my internet.
I had a phone call yesterday saying it'd been escalated and a tech would call me between 10 & 11am today and again nothing.
Cheers, Peter

Have you put you compliant to the TIO?

I used to have a personal acc with telstra, ie just home line, internet and mobile. Please Ia, not being racist here but I have difficulty hearing these accents, so each time would ask to speak to Australian, I would get the usual rabble etc etc etc, I solved that and ot quick results by saying, 'connect me to an australian person or I complain to the ombudsman".. Bingo got changed over every time.

Now I have a small business and deal with a Telstra business centre, cant praise them enough, even took a bunch of flowers in last week. If a shop or business centre gets lower than a nine in surveys they get rapped over the knuckles and re trained.

Also recently had a telstra service survey asked of me verbally not computer generated. I told them its a joy to speak to australians that I can understand and also these staff actually realise that Australian does not finish 50k outside of Melbourne or Sydney. I then asked the serveyee if head office got rapped if its record was below a nine.....that brought on a happy conversation about how good that would be.

Great news John. Nice to see someone eventually have a win with that mob.

Ross

We have a very noisy phone line at the moment so I rang Telstra on it to prove a point and instant action was the result. They sent me a mobile free of charge to have all my calls forwarded to and the tech showed up in two days which must be some sort of record. He fixed what was the obvious problem but it is still not solved and the problem appears to be in the house. All in all I was surprised at the instant response I got after the hassles I had last year with no land line for over a month on two separate occasions. What he fixed today Telstra installed last year and it was hanging off the pole already, good old Aussie workmanship I don't think.

Perhaps I could suggest Telstras desperate attempts at business services extend to the fact that they will be nothing more than a reseller of NBN services soon.

As a customer, you will simply be choosing a provider. Telstra, Optus, Joey Bloggs Internet.... All the same underlying service. As a consumer you can churn to a new provider in 20 minutes, the same as on mobiles now. Telstra simply couldn't give a rats about consumers, on any level.

Business, however, is a totally different story. They will attempt to contract you into a "bundle" for 5 years and will do anything possible to prise what little profit there will be in that ever stiffening corpse.

The NBN will be a master stroke of destruction to Telstra. A broadsword directly to their head, and it's about time.

Consumers and business will benefit from (ever increasing) new suppliers and be completely free of the old tyrannies and bastardry that are Telstras old bread and butter.

Originally Posted by Tonto

...............................not being racist here but I have difficulty hearing these accents, so each time would ask to speak to Australiane
............................

This is one of the main issues I have with "off shore" call centres. If I am having trouble understanding what they are saying, how can i be sure that they have understood what I've said. I have no confidence at all in O/S call centres. Of course you could get the same situation from someone here in Australia.

Originally Posted by Tonto

I used to have a personal acc with telstra, ie just home line, internet and mobile. Please Ia, not being racist here but I have difficulty hearing these accents, .

Originally Posted by Grumpy John

This is one of the main issues I have with "off shore" call centres. If I am having trouble understanding what they are saying, how can i be sure that they have understood what I've said. I have no confidence at all in O/S call centres. Of course you could get the same situation from someone here in Australia.

It's not racist. I expect as an Australian customer of an Australian firm to be able to speak to a person who understands the Australian idioms and speech patterns. I don't care if they are Calathumpian, Rastafarian or Eskimo's. Our home was zapped by lightening a few months back and I struggled with the call centers as they work through their set speech trying to find the problem. I didn't take it out on the people I was talking to as they are just trying to make a "quid" ( try saying that to a call center). I did fill out some sort of online survey stating that Telstra should train/hire competent English speakers before they let them loose on the public, which was probably sent to the electronic dust bin.


TT

Perhaps it is done deliberately.

First, if I speak with an unusual accent you are more likely to listen carefully to me (as I'm harder to understand) plus you are more likely to be polite (you don't know my culture, so you fall back on your manners)*

Second, you are more likely to go away and not ring back (!!!). If you were brickwalled the first time, why would your second attempt be any more fruitful?**

Personally I think huge companies very deliberately make their resolution centres only 0.2% better than absolute necessary to retain you as a client. If you are belligerent, you'll go elsewhere and that suits them jjjuuusstt fine! By doing this, they inflict their "worst" clients on competitors (excellent strategy!).

This is why we have a race to the bottom.


* where if I was Aussie profanities would flow freely.... And Aussies can be rude buggers.
** they already have your money, so you can now politely get knicked.

Originally Posted by woodPixel

Perhaps it is done deliberately.

First, if I speak with an unusual accent you are more likely to listen carefully to me (as I'm harder to understand) plus you are more likely to be polite (you don't know my culture, so you fall back on your manners)*

Second, you are more likely to go away and not ring back (!!!). If you were brickwalled the first time, why would your second attempt be any more fruitful?**

Personally I think huge companies very deliberately make their resolution centres only 0.2% better than absolute necessary to retain you as a client. If you are belligerent, you'll go elsewhere and that suits them jjjuuusstt fine! By doing this, they inflict their "worst" clients on competitors (excellent strategy!).

This is why we have a race to the bottom.


* where if I was Aussie profanities would flow freely.... And Aussies can be rude buggers.
** they already have your money, so you can now politely get knicked.

You may be over thinking this woodPixel. Firstly you are right, I do listen carefully when I am talking to a foreign call centre . However Telstra is for me the only show in town so I have to ring back. That is why Telstra can outsource their client service without fear of losing me. Yeah Aussies can swear a bit, there is good swearing and bad swearing

TT