I recently got ADSL connection through Australias primary govt owned Telecommunications provider, Telstra. It was nothing but an uphill pathetic battle to get even connected, let me share my war injury:
I went to bigpond.com, ordered an ADSL connection via their online form. Felt a bit richy, so i went for the WIFI ADSL solution (seen as though my upcoming laptop can be used in the lounge room without cords for my 15month old son to play with). So anywho, I registered, got the confirmation email informing me I will be contacted in two working days.
5 working days pass.. still no answer/call. So by this time, I figure somethings amiss, I shall call them instead.
I ring their sales department, and explain its been 5 working days, and still no reply about my Connection status (thinking maybe my telephone exchange isn't ADSL compatible). I humbly get a reply saying "Yeah, our online forms are broken, and we know about it, so most likely your request never came through".
To which I retort "well, I don't mean to be captain obvious, but why don't you either fix the form? - or - take the forms offline, so that customers like myself, can be informed?"
"We shall take that under advisment" replied the sales person.
So I figure, great start Telstra! you haven't even gotten my business, yet you're cocking things up!
I place my order, and now await for my kit. It supposed to arrive in 5 working days, but of course, yes it takes longer. Approx 7 days.
I get the ADSL kit (comprising of a WIFI modem, USB wireless network thingy and a bunch of splitters etc). I place my "Bigpond.com" installation CD into the computer, to which I'm followed by the most stupidist question of all:
"Please have your account details ready, as you will need this in order to proceed with the installation. This should of been emailed to you"
What genius, in what boardroom thought that was a great idea, in that send a customer his/her account details via email, a medium that requires Internet in the first place.. did i mention, my home is internet-less - thus why i needed ADSL... TO GET ONTO THE INTERNET! - you know god kills kittens for every time someone creates workflows like this.
So aside from now some poor kitten, getting knocked on the head for someone elses stupidity, I'm now in a 20minute phone tag with Accounts/Billing. Turns out every time I ring and request my details, they reset the password, resulting in a 10minute delay for the system to update - information they forgot to tell me upfront, thus when I enter my details, it appears to reject them. I then ring, and yes, they reset it, resulting in another 10 mins delay etc.. process repeats itself, yet another kitten is now executed.
So anyway, I get the account details sorted, hit the final process and behold - CANNOT LOG INTO THE BIGPOND NETWORK!. Why? because my phone line isn't in sync with the exchange or something along those lines.
So here I am, Saturday night, on the phone to a WIFI Technical Support dude (Which was 20mins later - did I mention I'm a new customer and haven't yet actually used the service?). I finally get through to a guy named Steve, who despite Telstras screwups was actually helpful and went beyond the call of duty to work this problem out. Mind you, he had the misfortune to inform me that Tuesday is the earliest possible time a telstra technician can come out and fix my problem.
Yet, another kitten is executed.
So here I am, typing this essay on a really bad customer service for such a simple technology solution and yes, you may be wondering as to why this has anything to do with Telstra being sold off.
If Telstra were to be sold off completely, they typically would not be able to hide behind government b.s, resulting in a fall out like you probably wouldn't believe. I'm no market analyst, but if a private telco were to have this same B.S over and over (see whirlpool.net.au, i'm not the first to experience this crap) - they would loose business quickly!
Point is, I paid the price by accepting what was typically easy sell market branding, in that i bought the whole "well they are the dominate one, and at the end of the day, all go through them, so maybe these guys will give me a greater ping" - Yet another kitten just got popped off.
So folks, thats my bad day with ADSL. Comments are welcomed |
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Any surprise with Telsra though?
