Not Happy, Telstra!
As a backup for my broadband internet access with Internode, I had maintained a prepaid dialup account with Telstra's BigPond. The service was ok, but fortunately my broadband service was reliable enough that I hardly needed to make use of the BigPond dialup account.
Recently I had forgotten to renew my prepaid dialup account in time, and the account became locked. This is fair enough, my bad. But my desire to unlock the account has been doused by some examples of poor service from Australia's largest telecommunications company, Telstra. Hence the motivation for this blog entry.
My first disappointment came when the BigPond member web site failed to provide any information about how one was to go about unlocking a locked account. The web site merely presented the following message when I attempted to log in:
"Your Account is either Locked or Pending Activation. Please try again in 24 hours."
I spent some time using the online Help Centre to see if I could get information about unlocking my locked account. The FAQ facility did not return anything useful.
The final disappointment came when I visited a Telstra Shop. The first person I spoke to was a junior staffer, and he was polite and replied honestly that he did not know. He asked me to wait while he asked someone who did know. Unfortunately this person was not as helpful as I'd have liked. He seemed to be a bit distracted, initially reeling of a phone number to call about my problem. The number must have been incorrect because the junior staffer reminded him that I was a BigPond prepaid dialup customer. Then he started reeling off another number, but I asked him to please write it down for me. He reluctantly did jot the number on a scrap of paper and gave it to me.
I guess I could now ring the number I was given to ask about unlocking my account. But given the level of service I've received, I'm not sure the company deserves my continued patronage.
The sad thing is: I am a Telstra shareholder. I'm also a Telstra mobile phone customer. It is arguably in my interests to use Telstra as my Internet service provider. However I will probably not bother unlocking my dialup account. As I said at the start, I'm a happy Internode broadband customer, and the dialup account was only a backup.
Recently I had forgotten to renew my prepaid dialup account in time, and the account became locked. This is fair enough, my bad. But my desire to unlock the account has been doused by some examples of poor service from Australia's largest telecommunications company, Telstra. Hence the motivation for this blog entry.
My first disappointment came when the BigPond member web site failed to provide any information about how one was to go about unlocking a locked account. The web site merely presented the following message when I attempted to log in:
"Your Account is either Locked or Pending Activation. Please try again in 24 hours."
I spent some time using the online Help Centre to see if I could get information about unlocking my locked account. The FAQ facility did not return anything useful.
The final disappointment came when I visited a Telstra Shop. The first person I spoke to was a junior staffer, and he was polite and replied honestly that he did not know. He asked me to wait while he asked someone who did know. Unfortunately this person was not as helpful as I'd have liked. He seemed to be a bit distracted, initially reeling of a phone number to call about my problem. The number must have been incorrect because the junior staffer reminded him that I was a BigPond prepaid dialup customer. Then he started reeling off another number, but I asked him to please write it down for me. He reluctantly did jot the number on a scrap of paper and gave it to me.
I guess I could now ring the number I was given to ask about unlocking my account. But given the level of service I've received, I'm not sure the company deserves my continued patronage.
The sad thing is: I am a Telstra shareholder. I'm also a Telstra mobile phone customer. It is arguably in my interests to use Telstra as my Internet service provider. However I will probably not bother unlocking my dialup account. As I said at the start, I'm a happy Internode broadband customer, and the dialup account was only a backup.
Labels: Telstra
posted by Bruno at 4:39 PM [permalink]
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