Do Not Sign Up With Telstra or Pacnet
January 7, 2010 | Filed under Australia, Reviews, Uni/Work
Telecommunications in Australia is a fucking joke. I don’t often blow off steam this way on my blog, and rarely post inflamatory negative reviews, but let me run you through a sequence of events that end up leading to the conclusion: Under no circumstances would I recommend that any business or organisation choose to use either Telstra or Pacnet for their telecommunications providers. They are both unreliable, incompetent, and unable to deliver on promises.
17 December: I informed Telstra, our phone line provider, that my organisation was moving offices. They agreed to disconnect our old number on the 31st of December, but that our new number at the new offices will be connected immediately (that very day) for our use. So both lines were active at the same time.
18 December: I informed Pacnet, our internet provider, that we would be moving offices, and gave them the new phone number. We were assured that our internet service would disconnect at the old address, and recommence at the new address on the 1st of January, the day we were scheduled to ‘officially’ start our residence at the new offices.
28 December: The 28th of December was our official move-in date (though our lease didn’t start till the 1st). I spent the day packing up the last of the boxes and moving everything to the new address. The rest of the week was spent just unpacking boxes and organising the new office – communications weren’t touched as our (freelance) tech support guy wasn’t back from vacation until the 6th of January.
6 January: Our tech support guy arrived at 9am on the dot to set up our network. Upon examination of the phone lines in the office, we found only one with a dialtone – Telstra managed to fuck up the reconnection and connected an expired number from a suburb on the other side of the city, instead of the number we were originally advised.
In a call to Telstra, we were advised that they can change the line to the correct number within an hour. We were also assured that as our internet service was connected to that number, that it would carry over as per normal with immediate usage. An hour later, we had the correct number, but Telstra managed to remove the codes placed on the phone line, so that our internet provider couldn’t get through. Another call later, we were assured that the right codes would be activated between 8am and 12pm on the 7th of January.
7 January: By 1pm on the 7th of January, our internet service still hadn’t been activated. Calling Telstra, we were informed that they had placed the codes on the phone line – codes designed for their own Bigpond internet service, though we had specifically stated that our internet provider was an outside carrier.
We were then required to call Pacnet to get the correct codes placed on the line – which they can do, but which they claim will take five to ten working days. This is a procedure that would take 24 hours at most, if they actually did it immediately instead of adding it to their To-Do list for later action.
And Therefore…
Between the fuckups caused by Telstra, and the incompetent service received from Pacnet, my organisation has been offline with no communication lines (phone, internet, fax or otherwise) since the 28th of December. This situation is likely to continue until the 5-10 working days specified by Pacnet pass – e.g. January 13 at the earliest. I’d like to know what kind of modern organisation Telstra and Pacnet believe can go without communication lines for upwards of two weeks. Keep in mind that we’re a member-based organisation whose business and reputation is based upon effective and prompt communication with its members.
Under no circumstances would I recommend that any business or organisation choose to use either Telstra or Pacnet for their telecommunications providers. They are both unreliable, incompetent, and unable to deliver on promises. One mistake I can understand. But a litany of mistakes that require us to make a million phone calls back and forth? Unacceptable. I’m going to be writing an official letter of complaint and asking that for the standard reconnection fees (plus any other expenses accrued because of their incompetency) to be waived because of the damage they have done to our reputation as a reliable organisation.
…and they make me look bad, because I’m the only one working here at the moment, and have had to deal with them every step of the way. When our members and the board of management look for someone to blame, who do you think will come under scrutiny? Not the incompetent providers, but the underpaid staff member who’s had to deal with them.
5 Responses to Do Not Sign Up With Telstra or Pacnet
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we had the phone lines drop out at work just randomly rang telstra and they were like sorry there’s been some problems caused by (telstra) adding a new line to a neighbor. to sum up no phone, internet, eftpos for 10 days customers were angry and we put a sign up saying “please bare with us but telstra stuffed everything up” and 90% had there own telstra story to tell, after 10 days of telling us they were fixing it, the boss flexed him corporate muscles and threaten to take all members of our company 400+ retailers off telstra. all of a sudden they were out and fixed it. except now when they rang the store it went to the fax machine. it was a joke that took 2 weeks to sort out lost the company thousands of dollars. and that is why telstra is the devil.
adam on January 7, 2010 #
That really sucks!
Though sometimes you can’t choose who to sign up with, e.g. at the place I’m at now, only Telstra provides a connection. It sucks, but thankfully there hasn’t been any big mishaps yet.
Belinda on January 8, 2010 #
that really sucks amanda.
i had crappy experience with telstra too… they took forever to relocate our new internet connection since we moved house.. >.< annoying!
suze on January 8, 2010 #
I currently get two telstra bills for my home phone from two different billing systems each month. It’s kind of really annoying.
nadine on January 8, 2010 #
Yeh guys, Telstra really fucked me over man. I had a $99 cap & it was always $300 bill, so I asked to be on a similar plan to my partner they wanted $700 to do it. After 15 years & $10′s of thousands later I now have next to me a recovery letter, threatening legal action, NICE. any body know how to stall the process indefenitely??, cheers, OPTUS Marty.
Marty on January 1, 2011 #