Hey Steemians,
Today's theme is...
Telstra.
Telstra has been making national news lately for all the wrong reasons. From a sliding stock price[1], to a potential cut to its overly generous dividend[2], to a nationwide 4G network outage[3], there hardly seems like there is ever any positive news about this company.
I've decided to journalise my troubles with Telstra. I'm sure some of my fellow Australians will know the pain I am in currently if they have ever been a customer of Telstra in recent years.
I have both my mobile phone service and fixed cable broadband with Telstra. Like most other Telstra customers, I have been affected by their recent nationwide outages to their 4G network. In addition to that I've also had localised issues with over the last few months, with the mobile phone network where I've had to get up and out of my house and go 200m down the street to be able to make and connect a phone call.
It makes it hard to take business calls, organise appointments and talk to other time constrained people, like your accountant or solicitor, if you have to get up and walk down the road to finish your conversation with them.
Worse still are my problems with my cable broadband. I have had cable broadband for almost 2 years now, but my troubles came about when I moved address late last year to a suburb in the north of Brisbane. The suburb I'm in doesn't get NBN yet and so it is still running ADSL and cable broadband, so when I moved I transferred my existing cable broadband service.
Fast forward to the current day and I've had 3 outages of significant time length. The longest outage was for 15 days straight, in which the entire cable broadband line along my street had to be replaced by subcontractors. To make things worse, for the entire outage, the updates that I was getting from Telstra was that it would be "fixed within 24 hours". I went the entire 15 days expecting it to be fixed within 24 hours and it was never until the last day.
I'm currently in another outage now (I'm tethered to my mobile phone, which only has 10gb). Telstra refused to add extra data to my mobile phone plan, as an interim service, when I called to report the fault. Apparently it is part of their "process" that if they're able to book a "technician visit" within 24 hours of the fault report they do not need to provide you with an interim service.
Fast forward and the technician has visited and told me that the entire cable network that was replaced recently is completely non-functional and needs to be fixed. It's not a job that he can do either - it has to be referred to another team and that's at least another 2 day minimum until they can get out to assess it. If it's anything like the last time though, I could be facing another 15 days of downtime.
At some point I really feel like I should be compensated over and above just having my bill discounted. I have attempted to have my contracts with Telstra thrown out so I can go to another provider, but I was rudely informed that I have to give them 3 documented attempts at fixing my internet before they'll consider it.
To make matters worse, whenever you have an issue with Telstra, they'll never automatically apply any discounting to your account, even if they acknowledge fault. You always have to call their billing team after the fault is repaired. Despite the fact that you'll receive a call from them to confirm that your internet is active again. The caller is never from a team that can apply discounts, and you'll need to hang up and call inbound into Telstra and wait forever on hold.
It seems like I've been unlucky to move into a neighbourhood where Telstra has neglected to spend any money in maintaining it's infrastructure. I think I need to move either back to my old suburb, or move to a new place on a different street and perhaps get internet with another provider.
I'll finish off with this bit of irony. For a significant portion of the time that I've been using Telstra's outage map, to check for status updates on my address, I've been greeted with this:
It's an outage map, that itself has frequent outages!
I'm sure this won't be my last issue with Telstra until I finally give them the flick.
Thanks for hearing my grievances. I'd be interested to read any other people's problems with Telstra. I know there has been huge issues - both technical and marketing, with how they've managed their part in the transition to the NBN.
Sources:
Telstra dividend cut would spark retail investor exodus - Australian Financial Review.
Source: http://www.afr.com/business/telecommunications/telstra-dividend-cut-would-spark-retail-investor-exodus-20180516-h104r8Telstra investors lose faith amid calls for drastic action - Australian Financial Review.
Source: http://www.afr.com/technology/web/telstra-investors-lose-faith-amid-calls-for-drastic-action-20180515-h102whReports of a major Telstra outage across Australia - news.com.au
Source: http://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/reports-of-a-major-telstra-outage-across-australia/news-story/e9ac80bb10cee6ce97e680d0c1cf6d5eTelstra - Across Communications
Source: http://acrosscommunications.com.au/projects/telstra/