Sunday 9 November 2014

Dear Telstra

Thank you so much for your care and concern. It is nice to know you have a "faults line" and what the number is (132203 should anyone wish to know). It is also good to know that we should contact our service provider if there is a fault to report. Yes, we can do that on Monday and they will have to report the fault to you.
Really?
Now Telstra let me explain again. The fault is yours. It is not the fault of our service provider. There is, thankfully, nothing wrong with our phone at present. Something may happen in the future but, for now, we are fine. The problem exists at the other end.
On Friday my sister's neighbour reported that she was getting the phone calls intended for my sister's house. This was a serious issue. My sister's son is a doctor. He is, at present, living with his parents. He needs a land line as well as his mobile. Internet access depends on the landline.  Right. You do understand that? Oh good.
You actually sent a technician to fix the problem. Really good.
But, you didn't actually fix the problem. You stopped the phone calls from going to the neighbour but you failed to check to see that they were going to the intended address. The house still has no access.
What's the problem you ask? Use your mobile phones. No. Apart from the additional expense it does not solve the problem.
Why? Well, more importantly it has created another problem. I was home all day yesterday apart from a quick trip to the library. And I went while the neighbour was there chatting to the Senior Cat. I could not go at any other time. Why? Because the Senior Cat has a medical alarm which is connected to my sister's land line. If he presses the button it will alert her. Right now that won't happen. Oh yes it would, eventually, call an ambulance but we don't want to do that if it means nothing more than my sister helping him to stand again in my absence. Oh just by the way Telstra my BIL's father is also in a dire state of health. He is waiting to have heart surgery and he lives alone too. He also needs to be able to call them by phone. That failure to do something could put someone else's life at risk.Yes, that is Priority Assist in your language Telstra. It means the line has to be fixed. It can't wait for a week or longer.
I tried Twitter and FB in an attempt to get you to do something about the problem. No, I didn't really expect to get anywhere but I am angry that you show no lack of concern for such circumstances.
And yes Telstra this is your problem because all the service provider can do is report a fault - a fault caused by your technician failing to do the job properly. It should not need to go to the service provider at all. You will have a report of the fault in your logs and it should be clear that it still has not been fixed.
So Telstra perhaps you would care to explain here why it is that you are so appallingly incompetent that not only do you not do adequate repairs but you also have a line to report faults that simply does not work?
Thank you
Cat

Right, having got that off my chest...the rest of the day was also filled with little frustrations. A book was put away in the wrong place (okay I probably did it without thinking) and I had to spend twenty minutes looking for it. The library did not have one of the books the catalogue said it had. The supermarket had run out of the right sort cheese.
The only good thing was that I have succeeded in finding two of the four people I have been searching for. They both live at the same address - obviously still at home with their parents. That was nice - and they sound pleasant and friendly. Now all I have to do is try my appalling French again and do some more searching for the other two.
After all, right now I cannot go anywhere.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Telstra ... the company who sent someone to fix our phone connection when we were had an intermittent phone connection ... here today, gone tomorrow.

Their solution was to borrow a phone from friends as they didn't have a spare one in the van. We decided we didn't need a land line.

To be fair, I think the technician who came was probably sick of the paper work like a lot of other government workers who deal with the actual problems.

Anonymous said...

Hope they sort the situation out faster for you than they did for us - eleven weeks and two days. I lost count of the calls we made and the technician was out here four times before they discovered the fault - in their hole down the end of the street. They had the nerve to bill us for rental for that period too. Bob C-S