Monday, April 18, 2011

Own Up: Who's playing the practical joke on me?

So I have never blogged twice in one day but I just had to get this one out for the sake of my own sanity!
Holy Moly, I swear someone is playing the biggest, most impressive practical joke on me lately as I attempt to deal with a major telephone company (Rhymes with MELSTRA).
About 2 weeks ago, I rang to reduce the company to purchase another mobile broadband dongle for my laptop, as the other one was getting quite slow. I had to change the billing address anyway and I know how slow service can be in store, so I thought I would do it over the phone.
About 30mins later, I had changed the billing address on my business’s internet account and ordered a new dongle, which they would send directly to me at my new address, which I had to give 3 times throughout the conversation. No problems, at least she was being thorough & I would have a new package in 2-3 days. Sweet!
So a few days later, my mum calls (who lives in Perth, while I am in Melbourne) to say that a courier has just delivered a package to me. Well I didn’t order anything, so I get her to open it and guess what, it’s my new Telstra dongle. WTF?
Now I haven’t lived at that address for over 7 years and the business account that I have both internet access account with, have no links whatsoever to that address, as they are held in the business name and I haven’t had a personal Telstra account in over 14 years.
So I ring them up to ask what is going on? It turns out that my current address is not valid and after repeatedly asking me if I am sure I am giving the right address, the computer says NO and they are unable to verify the address. So that’s why it was sent to Perth, my very unhelpful male customer service officer says so matter of factly – well DER, why didn’t I realise this. No calls to check, we just send it to the only other address that we have matched for you……….Crazy!
Even worse is that I ask, what happens if it wasn’t my parents address and someone else had just signed for it and taken it? His reply “Well we would have had a problem then, wouldn’t we?”
Then when I ask what they are going to do now, he cheekily suggests that the best, easiest thing would be to have my mum just send it to me……..So even though they stuffed up, we have to fix it. No chance! So instead we have to wait for a return bag to arrive, send it back and then they will send me a new one. At this stage I am really wishing I had just gone to the store…….
So 2 weeks pass and we still have no return bag to send it back (Although mum did receive my ‘Welcome to Telstra pack’ so good to see they deleted the address like they said they would). So I send in a complaint and hope that they will call me to sort out. Instead I get an email to say they can’t call, as they don’t have contact details for me……..(I had to add them when I entered the complaint, so why don’t you look there) but more importantly the email says, if I don’t ring back in 5 days then they will assume the matter was resolved. Putting back on the customer again, great work guys!
So today I call and they ask for my complaint number to get through my case manager. But guess what??????? My case manager no longer works in complaints (After sending the email 3 days ago) and so they have to assign me a new case manager. They ask if I can wait and after 10mins they say that they will just get them to call me back asap, as there is a queue. I give them my number this time and wait………………………….It’s been 2 hours since this happened and 2 weeks & 3 days since I started this process, do you think I will get a call E-V-E-R?
Not a happy customer!
(But oh so grateful I don’t have to work for them)
Becstar x

1 comment:

  1. 24 hours later and I am still waiting for the return phone call.

    ReplyDelete