Is Telstra Really a PAIN to Deal with ? for Me It Was

solidsnake on 30/10/2015 - 10:42
Last edited 09/11/2015 - 10:36 by 1 other user

Long story short,I was trying to get my adsl to be upgraded to NBN and a simple phone call was enough, NO.First they spelt my address wrong ( even though I spelt it right and it was in my account ).Secondly they cancelled the order because to rectify it they have to recreate the order (FAIR ENOUGH).They set me a date for technician to come in and i got confirmation email and SMS about the appointment.On the appointment day no tech shows up and there is no number to call as the number goes to a voice mail and no one returns your call .I called up NBN "Tech " support and they said my order been cancelled for "unknown reasons " .I took day off from work just to be at the appointment.I was on phone with them over 5 and half hours just for this issue.Considering they never return call on time and call on odd times when i am at work , even though i specifically asked them not to call on those times .Is it better to change from Telstra considering i had similar issues with them in past.I asked them to cancel the order so i can look for better options .any similar experience out there( i believe there is a lot with the sort of customer service they got, they are simply clueless).

UPDATE : Got NBN connected after couple of weeks and hours of tedious calls .

Related Stores

Telstra

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  shaz0316 on 30/10/2015 - 10:48

  +1

  You can add another option of "worst customer service, but I have no choice". I got disconnected 3 times and my order was also "lost" on another occasion. In the end, in hobart, I have lil choice for good internet.

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    solidsnake on 30/10/2015 - 10:53

    i will try to add them because i have to check the mods to change in Polls .Thanks shaz0316

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  lolmao on 30/10/2015 - 11:02

  +2

  They never sent my 2 orders for $15 prepaid sim cards. A month later I spoke to them on chat and they said they would organise a refund.

  After a few weeks the refund didn't happen so I called them. I had the 2 invoices with order numbers and I told them the order numbers and again asked for a refund.

  They told me the order numbers were not in their system and I would need to goto a Telstra store to sort it out.

  I told them this was totally unreasonable for me to waste my time going to a telstra store when I had given all the details and it was their problem but they wouldn't do anything and again said I would have to go in person to try to sort it out.

  I ended up calling my credit card company to file a chargeback and had the money back within a few days.

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  solidsnake on 30/10/2015 - 11:10

  they should not take this long ever .

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  nrg2010 on 30/10/2015 - 11:57

  +1

  I got $400 dollars compensation from Telstra last year due to their failure to provide a reasonable level of service. This paid for my phone bills for 6 months!

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  ESEMCE on 30/10/2015 - 12:10

  They're hopeless, but so are the competition..
  So in the drowning match that is the Australian Telco market, they probably don't win the race to the bottom.

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  [Deactivated] on 30/10/2015 - 12:21

  Telstra are one of the most incompetent telcos in the country. Unfortunately, most of the good alternatives have been bought up by other telcos who aren't much better than Telstra (and some are worse). If you want good service from a provider, you'll need to move to another country.

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  eatwell365 on 30/10/2015 - 20:09

  +1

  Sorry to be the devil advocate. I used to dislike Telstra but has had great experience with them in recent years, after ditching Optus.

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  Mumbles on 04/11/2015 - 15:24

  Its likely all the other NBN resellers are just as terrible. I'm in agreement with all the guys above.

  NBN is not Telstra infrastructure. That probably means that the cable installer who was a no show would also be the same person the other reseller's would have called too.

  As for the incorrect paper work/contracts/accounts. I'm a Telstra customer and had past issues with trying to bundle mobile phone, internet, land line together for TV advertised promotions. It was mainly due to their separated computer billing systems. The reason is because Telstra don't have just one computer billing system ie. they have one for mobile customers, one for fixed line, etc. So the accounts for each customer are stored in lots of individual systems and they don't talk to each other. This is a common problem for large or old companies.

  Having so many disparate billing systems and business processes makes it hard to undo/reverse Telstra problems.

  The only advice I can give you is to give Telstra feedback about the no show cable contractor so they might avoid using them. Also, try to be patient cause the NBN is a really new product. Its likely that a lot of these fly by night NBN resellers which are popping up will have even more teething problems than the big boys.

  One thing I do like about Telstra in recent times is that if there's a long outage (eg. >2 week) you can often ask and they will compensate you satisfactorily + they give you a dedicated case officer + escalate you in their CRM. For other ISP's I would imagine the best you'd get is verbal apology and your future problems will also get put on the back burner.

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  songford on 05/11/2015 - 00:05

  lol everything's going pretty lose with Telstra. My flatmate was charged $600 for no obvious reason last year, only on the payslip Telstra claimed that they sent some random senior technician to his home although nobody was ever shown up in the end. And there came the long phone war with their customer service team - he said that's the most awful experience he had ever have - you know, usually you'll have to wait for half an hour before your phone call is picked up - a bunch of clueless offshore representatives that were completely ignorant of the situation - wasn't looking good at the beginning since most of the representatives refused to work around with this situation, saying they are not familiar with what's going on. Dramatically on the other day another representative somehow instantly agreed on waiving all this fee and even promised giving out compensating credits. I was like WHAT?

  If I wasn't with him all the time and heard the whole conversation I am definitely not buying this s**t. Looks like they just randomly charge people and randomly revert the charge and spamming out their credits all over the place, depending on their moods. If my flatmate wasn't that resilient one of their employees might have a $600 spending money into his pocket. Boo.

  I don't even dare to switch to Telstra. I'm with TPG now, although the latency is crazy and it regularly goes offline, they are probably not going to charge me anything other than my agreed utility fee.

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  [Deactivated] on 10/11/2015 - 01:32

  +1

  They are disorganised as. Just bad.
  I bought eight $30 simpacks with postage, they mailed to my postoffice, then called them all back and said I have to pickup and show 3 forms of ID.
  I said no way, give me a refund.
  Still chasing it after hours of calls, and refund being ordered 3 times by them. They sent 8 large return envelopes for me to return the items they wouldn't send. Should I mail them 8 bricks as I planned? Thats how much sense dealing with them makes.
  I'll be ringing yet again this week after about 4 months of it being sorted out but no refund yet.

  What scubacoles said ->
  They're hopeless, but so are the competition..