Typical Optus stupidity

As woeful as Telstra is, Optus is worse. It once took me nearly a year to get Optus to admit to a fault and reimburse me -- and that was only after I wrote to the chief executive of their parent company -- which was in London at the time. And when I tried to get some details about their wireless internet service recently, I had to write to their parent company again -- by now in Singapore -- before I got any information out of them. The journalist below only got any information because he had the private number of an Optus executive. I would LOVE to see Optus go broke. Whoever bought up their assets might figure out how to run a REAL phone company. Optus at the moment are living testimony to the fact that a duopoly is not much better than a monopoly.

I am back with Telstra at the moment but only because I have found the one guy there who is able and willing to help with problems. And, boy, is he needed! He is some guy called Sol Trujillo. He doesn't fix you up himself but he passes your letter on to someone who can. Now if only I could get his phone no.!

I note that Telstra has just cut off one of the avenues for complaints about it so arrogance just seems to be the hallmark of Australian phone companies. And, as I pointed out on May 25th, the government "Ombudsman" who is supposed to keep them in line is of very limited help. It's lucky Australians are such an easygoing lot. In any other country, one of the company officials concerned would probably have been shot by now. We do however now have a lot of Muslims living here who may not be so easygoing


For me, not being able to access the internet is like losing an arm. Imagine how I felt on Saturday morning when the wild weather not only knocked me offline but took my home phone with it. Both my home phone and cable internet are provided by Optus - a usually harmonious relationship that last weekend was put to the test.

Now, I'm not for a minute comparing my woes to the devastation across the state. There were people far worse off at the weekend but for me the frustration of trying to get some information out of Optus, to confirm the storm caused the dramas, drove me to the brink of insanity. After dialling the customer number using my mobile (also Optus but thankfully still working) I got a painfully annoying auto-reply recorded message which asked me to explain the nature of my inquiry. I got the dreaded "I'm sorry, I didn't get that" reply and after four attempts (two were ruined because I swore into the phone) I advanced to the next stage. I was finally put in touch with a "customer service representative".

After more time on hold I was connected to a friendly man named Ravi who had a distinct Indian accent, which was at times hard to understand. He suggested I restart my modem - which I'd already tried. Ravi told me he was unaware of any network problems. I asked Ravi where he was and he told me he was in Delhi, India. "What's the weather like?" I asked. "It's very hot," he said. "Do you know about the weather in Sydney?" I said. "No," Ravi answered. "What's it like?" I explained we were seeing some of the worst storms, wind and rain in the past 30 years. Ravi suggested I wait things out.

I then called the office number of a contact at Optus corporate affairs on the off chance she would receive it before the end of the long weekend. To her credit, I got a call back an hour later and it was only then I found out there were several surrounding areas without internet and phone connections and technicians were working on the problem. It's a shame, I told her, I had to talk to a robot and someone in India to try and find out what was going on in my own backyard.

Services were restored nearly 24 hours later. The weather was still hot in India.

Source


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