Divorce Telstra – its not worth the pain any more

After 45 years of being devoted to Telstra, we simply can’t discuss to one another anymore. Telstra’s whole lack of ability to produce human call-centre service to a client is the final straw within the divorce Telstra saga.

First, somewhat historical past. I’ve been wedded to Telstra for about 45 years. Proper from the time, my cellphone transitioned from the Postmaster Normal to Telecom Australia. That was from one poorly run authorities service to effectively, one other much more poorly run authorities service. Let’s not discuss concerning the latter change to the extremely incompetent and heartless Telstra – I don’t need to trigger extra shareholder suicides than is critical.

In 1979 I began a enterprise and Telecom was the one choice till Optus got here within the 90s. Telstra then was not the business-grade service that I wanted. I wanted a number of, aggregated ISDN traces – ‘bandwidth’ to benefit from the approaching web growth. In 1992, effectively forward of the curve, I arrange in-house electronic mail and web servers for our rising enterprise and purchasers.

Our wants had been greater than Telecom may present. Within the late 90s, we moved every little thing to the newly shaped Brennan IT.

Swiftly, we may harness the ability of the web, together with SIP trunks (Telstra didn’t have a clue what these had been). By early 2000 we had a nationwide community of voice and information utilizing Brennan’s community. We even owned cellphone quantity blocks in every State and each name we made value solely an area name price because it exited our community to hitch Telstra’s final mile.

In 2010 I offered my enterprise pursuits and have become, shudder, a client. In easy English, meaning you go from having a devoted Telstra enterprise supervisor (that all the time wished to play golf to win extra enterprise) to somebody it couldn’t give a crap about.

Why I have to divorce Telstra

Telstra is a premium service – a minimum of that’s what it says it’s. The very fact is that it affords worse client service for larger costs counting on folks like me to slavishly follow what they know.

Nicely since NBN and the rise of MVNOs, to a client a minimum of, Telstra is now nothing greater than a commodity.

All is ok when every little thing works with Telstra. When it stops, there’s little or no a client can do. I gained’t regale you with the problems over the previous few years besides to say that I’ve so many trials and tribulations with Telstra that I’ve no different however to divorce Telstra. Let’s simply say that after the final episode Telstra needed to refund me for 2 years of substandard web service and pay the TIO fines for its lack of ability to promptly motion the effectively documented and reported points.

Bounce ahead a couple of months, and every little thing was going effectively.

The web velocity was nonetheless variable, however a minimum of it was extra dependable. The trigger – a Telstra routing situation that took two years to search out and ten seconds to repair!

However with out warning a couple of months in the past my $99 month-to-month bundle elevated to $139 for an unreliable FTTN service. I rang Telstra (13 20 00/13 22 00), and the Telstra recording instructed me that resulting from COVID, all communication was by way of Chat and an SMS hyperlink appeared on my cellphone. OK, I pressed the hyperlink, and nothing occurred. There was no ‘skilled’ ready to resolve my points.

Let’s simply say that I attempted each Telstra contact quantity that I may discover. All resulted in an SMS hyperlink that didn’t work (seems that the hyperlinks are time-sensitive).

To chop an extended story brief one of many hyperlinks lastly labored and led to a irritating SMS trade with a faceless assist particular person. They merely didn’t perceive that my invoice had elevated with out discover, and I wished it fastened. As a substitute, I obtained a “How did we price” so put one-star in. I repeated this 3 times earlier than I gave up on Telstra Message.

Divorce Telstra – what are the options?

If it’s a smartphone, don’t go on a Telco plan. Purchase a handset you could afford and go to one of many higher month-to-month billing MVNOs like Increase, Woolworths, Aldi or these days Aussie Broadband.

If it’s the NBN web, then you may select from a truckload of CSPs.

However most shoppers merely go to the worth comparability web sites. They’re ripped off by what makes these websites the perfect cash – not what’s the finest CSP for you.

I checked out Whirlpool (a telco tech website) and located a couple of points to concentrate on. First, I wished an Australian name centre with actual folks (not a digital CSP that’s completely on-line). Subsequent, I wished a CSP that ‘owns’ and may repair its community construction that it overlays on NBN (goes to reliability). Lastly, after Telstra, I wished good customer support from an organization that cares. Whirlpool helped be slender that all the way down to Aussie Broadband.

GadgetGuy’s homeowners had had related points with Telstra, at the same time as a enterprise consumer.

In brief, they regarded round for an organization that cares and signed up with Aussie Broadband.

So, I known as Aussie Broadband and right away obtained an actual, native Aussie who wished to assist.

In a couple of minutes, I had determined to divorce Telstra and get engaged to Aussie. I say engaged as a result of Aussie doesn’t have lock-in contracts and understands that it must carry out to maintain prospects. In contrast to Telstra, it is aware of that it prices much less to maintain a consumer than win a brand new one. No marvel it has a five-star ranking to Telstra’s one.

I’m about to crack a very good bottle of Champagne to have a good time. After three years of buyer abuse (truly ten years), I’ve no extra ties to that hopeless organisation. I’m nonetheless attempting to get a refund by way of its pathetic messaging system.

You may examine different folks’s Telstra ache at TrustPilot.