Telstra – 3 Hearty Raspberries!

On the afternoon of Sunday, 27 January 2013, a little before 6 PM, I lost all, repeat ALL, Telstra services.  This makes 3 strikes, in baseball terminology, which really ought to mean that you’re out Telstra!  Where did these 3 strikes come from?

Strike 1 : In the hours leading up to the invasion of Far North Queensland by Cyclone Yasi, I had no Internet access to find out what was happening.  That date was Thursday, 3^rd February, 2011, and the only information available to me was via a very cheap AM radio, tuned to an ABC AM radio station!  Hell, Telstra, if you can’t do better than an ABC AM radio station in an emergency, why the HELL am I paying you all this money?

You failed dismally there and, for mine, that ailing was also a failing on the grounds of Safety of Life and was, therefore, Strike 1.

Strike 2 : On the day of the total solar eclipse, you couldn’t keep up with demand and I bet you thought you got away with it because of a lack of complaints.  Well you didn’t get away with it because I remember it very well indeed, as I’m sure will many others as soon as they read this blog.  To save you the embarrassment of having to look it up, the date in question was Wednesday, 14^th November, 2012.

The only sources of Internet access that were available to me at the time were via mobile phone or Bigpond Wireless Broadband – neither of which worked for me until the evening of that day.  Gee, thanks for that superior service for which I pay such a high premium!  It worked up until there’s any pressure at all on your precious system, so if I’d had a Safety of Life issue, I’d have died, and that made Strike 2.

Strike 3 : So now we come to Sunday, 27^th January 2013.  I had no mobile phone or Internet access through Telstra from approximately 5:52 PM – even my new mobile Wi-Fi, was useless!  At that time, I was VERY concerned for the safety of friends in south-east Queensland who might be in the path of the current floods that have resulted from ex-Tropical Cyclone Oswald.  Could I contact any of them, in any way at all?  With more raspberries to you, the answer to that question is most decidedly NOOOOOOOOOOO!

At the very time when your services are needed the most, where are they?  They do NOT exist.  Why anyone is a customer or yours is beyond me, yet I’m still CHAINED to your useless, unreliable and overly expensive network because I thought that you might have a bit more consideration for your customers – especially in light of the Safety of Life issues that surround telephone and wireless communications these days.

That is the 3^rd failure (and indeed by far the longest!), Telstra, in a time of great need.  It is Strike 3 for yet another reason too.  When I was unable to use my phone to enquire about the problem, I had to drive to the nearest Telstra Shop, where I was informed that your communication centre for the whole of Queensland had gone underwater due to the latest flooding.  Now, as I have already said, I lost my Telstra services a little before 6 PM last Sunday, which was well before any flooding was actually reported in south-east Queensland so how could it have happened?

And, if it did in fact happen, why did it not happen in the much more serious flood event of 2011?

There needs to be a much more reliable system than having all communications going to the same place in your network.  Don’t you know that it’s a very bad idea to put all your eggs in the one basket?  Or didn’t any of you go to school on the day when that lesson was taught?

Am I merely wasting my time – and money – by staying with Telstra?  Please tell me that I’m wrong… and why.

Are Cheap Airfares Good For Us?

The advent of cheap airfares gave hope that more people, who previously could not afford to travel by air, would be able to do so.  It was, undoubtedly, also intended to compete with other, cheaper forms of mass transportation – trains and inter-city buses.  The marketing seems, therefore, to have been squarely aimed at people with limited financial resources, while also trying to take business away from the long-established mainstream airlines.

We have long believed that we get what we pay for, so it follows that we must expect to get less if we pay less – well, with the possible exception of some of the "sales" in shops, shopping centres and the like.  But where do we draw the line when it comes to paying for any service that won't be rendered straight away, subsequently changing your mind about it but being ineligible for a refund?  If anyone accepts our money, in exchange for a service to be rendered, should we be entitled to a refund if we change our mind about the service?

As a case in point, consider a pensioner who decides to travel to a city that's quite a long way from where he lives, for the sole purpose of attending a reunion of former school friends.  Being on a very limited budget, he looks for the best travel option and finds that Jetstar has the cheapest fares for the travel dates that he needs.  He books online and pays the same way, then tells all his former school mates, by email, that he'll be there with them – everyone is understandably excited to be meeting up again after so many years.

Closer to the date of the reunion, the guy who's making arrangements for the reunion venue sends email to everyone in the group.  The message is bad news because the venue has been severely damaged by vandals who set it on fire.  Time is now too short to book an alternative venue for the same date and the soonest available date will require the reunion to be delayed by a month.

Our pensioner isn't the only one in the group to have problems with the change of date and it's soon apparent that the reunion needs to be deferred to the same date, next year, if the others are all able to accept the deferral.  Then our pensioner discovers that cancelling his travel on Jetstar means they'll keep his money, despite providing no service at all.  He will now be unable to attend the reunion next year because the intervening time will not be long enough for him to save up for the trip – he now frets that he'll never see his old school mates again because, after all, he's not getting any younger.

Has the airline actually stolen our pensioner's meagre money, as well as robbing him of a final opportunity to get together with his school mates?  Where is the morality in having a "no refund" policy?  Is this the basis of a cheap airfare?  Do we really have to lower our expectations in line with low airfares?

Of course, the obvious counter-argument is that airlines recommend that their customers take out travel insurance.  That might be fair enough except that, even at pensioner's rates, booked online at a slight discount, the insurance premium adds something like $35 to $40 to the costs that our pensioner must pay.  And, after all, he intended to travel so why would he consider having to buy insurance – especially when he doesn't have a lot of spare money.

It's entirely possible that our pensioner would've encountered the same problem whether he'd booked on a bus or a train – or another “budget” airline. The real issue to be addressed however is :- Are  budget airlines really that much cheaper, or do they merely save their own costs by passing them onto their customers for all the free services provided by mainstream airlines?

If a traveller can pack light, to stay within the much-reduced "free baggage limit", no extra cost will be incurred for baggage.  Then, if the traveller doesn't require food or drink during the flight, no extra cost will be incurred that way either.  Airlines and medical professionals know that the dry air in an aircraft's cabin can be dehydrating for people and it is advisable to drink water, in a quantity that passengers can't carry onto any flight due to the "LAG" (Liquids, Aerosols and Gels) restriction to 100 millilitres of liquid.

Such a small quantity of water may not be enough to counter the debilitating effects of dehydration on any but the shortest-duration flights.  On a long flight, e.g. Perth to Brisbane, passengers should have more fluid than they are allowed to take on board.  The "budget" airlines will provide that liquid but it might not be free and, in that event, will mean that they don't believe there is a responsibility under their duty of care.

On that basis, it seems possible that the so-called budget airlines are merely a cruel joke on customers who must do all the budgeting themselves.  For first time flyers, it may be impossible to gauge the budget they’ll need for the flight because they simply won’t know what they don’t know about air travel, free baggage allowance, need for food and drink – and cost of the same.  Those who can afford it will also have travel insurance but, as the budget airline market targets people with limited financial resources, can those customers really afford all the costs?

Of course, travel insurance premiums are the same, regardless of whether a passenger travels on a budget or mainstream airline.  The difference is, however, that our pensioner would have been able to claim a refund, minus a fair and reasonable cancellation fee.  It would then be somewhat easier for him to make up the difference between the cancellation fee, the refund and the new ticket price, in time for next year’s reunion.

Then his only residual concern is whether or not he’ll live long enough to be at that reunion.

In this example, our pensioner’s budget wouldn’t stretch to the cost of a ticket on a mainstream airline.  He figures that an airline offering lower ticket prices is his best option and considers that there’ll be little difference between this form of transport and a train, or bus.  He’s basically right but, whether he's aware of it or not, there’s a restriction on the size and weight of luggage that will be carried without charge; he may need more water than he can legitimately carry aboard (even if he knows the limit, or indeed that there may be a need for water on the flight).

If this pensioner was to be asked whether or not a cheap airfare is good for us, I'm sure we can all guess his answer.

Telstra : You Suck!

Lest there be the slightest degree of confusion, this is an open complaint to Telstra which is circulated throughout cyberspace in the hope that they get the message.  I've been a loyal customer for many years but it seems that loyalty is only a one-way street.

For 2 years, I used a post-paid plan on an iPhone 3.  About 2 months after the contract expired (i.e. I then owned the old-technology phone), I chose to buy a new, unbanded phone and insert and activate a Telstra SIM card.  At the same time, I opted to change from post-paid to a prepaid plan, all of which had to be arranged via your call centre in The Philippines.

After activating the SIM through the call centre, I was told to buy a recharge so that I can use the phone as soon as possible, though I should wait about half an hour for the change of payment plan to be recorded.  I duly bought a recharge voucher and, after a wait of about half an hour, tried to use Telstra's 1258888 number to record the payment.  This is where all my problems began because I was unable to effect the recharge - I heard a recorded message that accused me of not using a Telstra mobile to make the call!  WTF?

Rang your Filipino call centre and was told that my plan changeover might be delayed by all the extra phone connections that have happened since Christmas Day. Accordingly, I should wait 4 hours, from the time of my first call to them, before making a further attempt to record the recharge payment.

When I called them, some 4.5 hours later, the story had changed to 24 hours and, as this is inconveniencing me, they would record the recharge voucher for me.  They duly noted the voucher number and said that the payment was now recorded but, as the plan changeover hadn't occurred yet, I was still on the post-paid plan so would have all the facilities that I'd enjoyed with the previous phone.

After a further 25 hours had elapsed and I was still not on the new plan, I rang the Filipino call centre yet again.  On this occasion I was told that it can take up to FOUR WORKING DAYS to change the payment plan!  This time I exploded because it was then clear to me that nobody in that call centre has the slightest clue about what they're supposed to be telling your customer!  It'd be really nice if Telstra actually provided them with some training and standardisation but, of course, you might only contemplate that if you had any regard at all for your loyal customers!

So then, on the basis that I'd been further inconvenienced, they offered to credit my account with an extra $30.  I didn't really need it but it was offered so I took it though I doubted that it would make any difference to my plan change.

The cynic within me is forced to conclude that, because I didn't buy a phone from Telstra, you now have the right to stuff me around for as long as you like.  This would not be a good move for an organisation that seems to need good public relations.  Indeed, this blog might tell you that you're already on the receiving end of some very bad publicity but, then, I'm sure you have a great deal of experience with that sort of publicity.

I continue to await your pleasure in changing over my plan though it needs to be said that my phone enjoys NONE of the data privileges of my post-paid plan, so it would seem that you have already been stuffing me around for too long.  Will it require me to lodge a complaint with the ACCC, or perhaps "A Current Affair", before you give me some service?  For now, Telstra, you suck.