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.