Recently Telstra decided to stop offering the mobile phone plan we had both phones on since, well, it was too good and making too many people happy therefore it had to end.  Looking around for alternatives we soon realised we were not the right target audience for telephone companies - we don’t need to send 200 text messages per night, nor do we want to surf the net for cute animated kitten images to send to our friends as picture messages.

However, they offered basically the same deal as the others (Virgin, Optus, etc) when it came to the lower end of the market and since many of my family use Telstra it would advantage them if we were also with Telstra.  So we signed up despite:

• We dislike Telstra’s generally crap service.
• We have to query incorrect charges about every third bill.  When they credit the account back, they don’t do it immediately so the next bill is wrong also.
• The Telstra billing system is such that if multiple calls are made on the same day, those calls may be listed over three separate monthly bills - the net effect of which is to cause some months to exceed the included call amount and therefore increase their income through duplicitous means.
• Telstra forced us onto plans that cost more and offer less.
• When signing up online, their website crashed right after entering my credit card details, forcing me to then contact their call centre to sort it out
• When I contacted the call centre, they transferred me to the wrong department.
• The first wrong department transferred me to a different wrong department.

In all, it took quite some time to work through all the plans and we’ll probably have to go through this all over again in a year’s time when the contract expires.  So the SPOTD goes to us for signing on with a company we despise.

Categories: SPOTD