Phone company frustration

When my company moved to our new office (Christmas 2007), I rang the phone company, ‘Telstra’, to get our phone lines moved from the old office to the new one. The phone lines changed over on the right day, apparently without any problems.

Four months later, we realised that some of the bills hadn’t shown up. After hunting around, we found that some of the bills had gone to the old office. Others had been sent to a director’s home address. He rang Telstra. The male assistant immediately noticed we had money outstanding on our account. ‘I can’t do anything with your account until you pay the outstanding bills.’

‘The reason we haven’t paid them is because you’ve been sending them to the wrong address. That’s why I’m calling.’ ‘Well, it must be some problem with the account address,’ replied the assistant.
‘Yes. [That’s what I just said.] We sent Telstra a letter two months ago, advising you of this information. We asked you to update your records so that the accounts would be billed to the new address.’
‘Well, Telstra is a big organisation. A letter could easily go to the wrong person and be missed,’ said the assistant.
‘That’s funny – I was talking to another Government department the other day. We hadn’t replied to a letter they had sent to us. They told me that once a letter had been sent with Australia Post, it was legally deemed to be received.’
‘I can’t comment on what government departments say. We aren’t a government organisation anymore,’ stonewalled the assistant.

Two weeks later, I was frustrated (but not surprised) to hear the address problems hadn’t been completely sorted out with Telstra, the company whose advertisements chant "I am, We are, You are Australian". The company that loses its own mail and blames its customers for the mistake. I truly hope that is not what it takes to be Australian.

(Telstra Logo from The T-Shirt Shop Australia)

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