Worst Practice

As I said, my modem fell of the twig, or, more precisely, the dsl's light went out. I thought - in my naivete - that once I'd reported the said deceased, that they would either send me a new one, or send a technician.

Okay, the nice sounding young man tells me a second tier (que?) technician will contact me in the next three days to confirm a time to come around and look at the damn thing. (Oh, here's a direct quote: "Ma'am, I have to warn you that if the device has been tampered with, or unauthorised action taken to compromise it's usage you will have to pay for the technician's call out.") o_O

There was no call on Sunday, expected that; nothing on Monday, either, probably busy; my mother took the call on Tuesday:

Tech: "A technician will be there next Thursday."
Mum: "Oh, Thursday will be wonderful."
Tech: "Okay, a technician will be there between 8am and 5pm."
Mum: "Er, can he be here in the afternoon?"
Tech: "Yep, I've made a note."
Mum: "Thank you."
Tech: "Okay, I've booked you in for Thursday the 5th of October, in the afternoon."
Mum: "Excuse me? Did you say the 5th? I thought you meant..."
Tech: "Yep, someone will be there in the afternoon. Thanks, see you then, bye." Tech hangs up.
Mum: "B..."

I know what today's date is: it's the 27th of September, and TELSTRA can't fix the modem until the 5th of October?

Yes, I live in the country, but there is a main TELSTRA workshop and exchange twenty miles away, with a spruiking shop in case you need a mobile phone, and they can't possibly come out for another week?

Not. Happy.

I'll have no internet access from home, but I do have it at work. Of course, that makes life that much more difficult. I'll have to have my research done before I leave for the long weekend on Friday.

I've been without the internet; it's inconvenient, that's all. The problem is the lack of respect from TELSTRA.

If I lived in the city, a tech would have been dispatched on Monday. But I don't. I'm in the country, in the bush, and we are disregarded as not having a lot of income worth versus output expense - unless you're a corporation; individual people cost them money.

Of course, I could be wrong; it could be that with all the job cuts TELSTRA CEO Sol Trujillo initiated, there might be simply be a lack of technicians available. And this on the eve of the public float of another $8 billion worth of government shares.

If it wasn't for the contract, I'd have left TELSTRA BIGPOND six months ago. But I do have a contract, and I will honour it, even if this telecommunications giant couldn't be bothered.