[LINK] Telstra is lying to customers

[Jan Whitaker]

Heads up. 

Part 1. 

I got a call from Telstra this morning telling me I had to make an appointment for THEM to come install NBN asap because they are decommissioning the phone lines in my area. At first the caller didn't say this was because of NBN, not until I asked. I only have voice service with them. I started to smell a rat.

I said that no, I have 18 months to change over. He said I was wrong, that NBN was wrong and that I would just have my phone line shut down. I don't know how many times I told him I was furious about this.

Then he asks me for MY personal details (he had called me, remember). I refused. I said I don't give out my personal details to people who call me. Then he rattled off his name and employee ID number and a phone number I could call.

He kept saying this was to make sure it was a free installation. That was news to me. I knew NBN installation was at no charge.

I said I wasn't going to set an appointment for anything with him until I got independent advice. He didn't understand why I needed that. I explained I only had voice service with them, which he knew. And that I may not want to buy anything from them when I switched, and didn't buy my Internet service from them right now. I'm on ADSL and when they decommission the phones lines, I lose that, too, so this wasn't a spur of the moment decision. He said well then, you'll not have a voice service either.

I asked him for the phone number he'd mentioned before so I could call it, and he said it was just the number on my phone bill. So evidently, that is just a general number, no way to call for this supposed appointment.

Part 2.

After venting to our good friend Brenda (waving at Brenda), I called my ISP and ordered their complete service. I found out I NEVER have to deal with TELSTRA EVER AGAIN! They lost a 20 year customer AND it's going to cost me less for even more data/speed than I have now. That will be sorted in the next few weeks, including making the installation appointment with NBN - NOT Telstra.

Part 3. (yeah, I didn't let it stop with that)

After all that, I went to collect the mail. Lo and behold, there's a letter from NBN Co, telling me I could now order my NBN service, but didn't have to do it right now because: "will be disconnected in approximately 18 months". So I was right, and Telstra is LYING to its customers. I thought, who needs to know about this? My answer: NBN. So I found the fine print phone number for them on the letter

1-800-687-626

and spoke to a lovely lady named Chelsea who took my complaint, saying she had heard this before and wasn't sure why Telstra was telling people this. The 18 months IS the disconnect time limit. She said that they are probably trying to trick people through fear of losing their phone lines into cutting over to them directly. I said to her that as the wholesaler, they needed to know what the retailers were up to, and she agreed, also suggesting I complain to Telstra.

I have no intention of complaining to a company that I'm THRILLED to be shed of after 20 years of handcuffs and the upside that I will no longer be paying them just for a connection (hint: HFC NBN with Internode comes with a no-service-charge phone service, pay for what you use, which is 2/3 the cost of Telstra's per call charge).

I'm going one better by exposing Telstra for their shonky business practices and hope that others take their business elsewhere, too.

So, if you have any outlets for this story, please feel free to share it - WIDELY. The near monopoly of Telstra is nearly at an end.

The End.




I write books. http://janwhitaker.com/?page_id=8

Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
Twitter: <https://twitter.com/JL_Whitaker>JL_Whitaker
Blog: www.janwhitaker.com 

Some psychopaths become serial killers, and other psychopaths become prosecutors. - Bob Ruff, Truth and Justice, June 2016

Sooner or later, I hate to break it to you, you're gonna die, so how do you fill in the space between here and there? It's yours. Seize your space. 
~Margaret Atwood, writer 

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