Telstra is a Piece of Crap

OMG! Is the world fucked, or is the world fucked?

I had to call Telstra to report a fault on my mum's phone. When I call her, now that she is succumbing to the passage of time, sometimes it takes her a while to get to the phone. And sometimes she is outside, or not at home. So, often the phone will ring out without being answered. When my mum's phone rings out, it doesn't simply stop ringing it, seemingly, goes to a fax machine, well that is the sound it makes. My mother does not have a fax machine, does not have an answering machine, does not have a compute, in fact, all she has is the simplest of phones. So, apart from not wanting to be charged for the call connecting to a non-existent fax machine, I want the problem rectified so it doesn't happen.

Do you think the good Filipino woman on the other end of the line can understand what the fault is? No, not a chance.

And, not only have Telstra reduced their customer service to a level where it is non-existent, they managed to send a technician to work on my mum's phone, who managed to damage the house alarm to such an extent that he left the key pad sounding a high pitched wail every five minutes, a key pad that is next to my mother's bedroom, leaving her unable to speak.

When I called back today to complain, not only did the good Filipino woman on the other end not understand the problem yet again, she was insistent on sending another technician out to fix the problem from inside the house, completely missing the point that the first technician was inside the house.

Actually, the forth Filipino woman, because the first three hung up on me at some point in each phone call.

I wasn't rude, I didn't swear or lose my cool, but I was insistent. When they said that they understood what the problem was, I asked them to explain back to me what the problem was that I had asked to be fixed. They either got it completely wrong - you mother's incoming calls go straight to a fax machine, you mother's phone rings three times and then goes to her fax machine, your mother can't get incoming calls. None of the four women that I spoke to could grasp what the problem was.

Telstra it is just not good enough!

I have left notes for the next technician to call me before he does anything. I assume he will speak proper English and, unfortunately, he will be hearing from me in no uncertain terms.