cooks with Telstra

[echnidna]

When I got ISDN I couldnt recieve calls on my listed number.
Use the current phone directory and get a number that doesnt work.
Ring directory and the same happens.

Today I got an email from one of their managers telling us that we can now get broadband.

Their website tells us we cannot get Broadband.

Hurry up privatisation so Telstra can go down the gurgler.

[outback]

We've got ISDN too. HAd a techo here today cos' it was playing up. He said we shouldn't even have ISDN, yet the website says we can get broadband. :rolleyes:

[echnidna]

we cant get broadband and technically cant get isdn either. at least a crappy isdn is better than our old dialup which would fallout continually.

Then I get email saying we can get Broadband. Iwonder whose talking through their toilet paper.

[Cliff Rogers]

There are places in Cairns within 9 blocks of the city centre that can't get ADSL or ISDN 'cos there's not enough real copper in the ground but poor silly old Tel$tra still wastes money in that area on snail mail campains promoting broadband????

[Iain]

My ISDN works well (so far) and is faster than the Broadband at work :confused: :confused: :confused:

[Wood Borer]

What else do you expect from a company run by accountants and marketing people?

Cost cutting - inferior service and untrained staff

Glossy brochures - don't let the details get in the way!

Many of my mates and myself are ex employees from that company. When redundancy packages were introduced, they were based on current salary and years of service.

Who do you reckon put their hands up and left?

Choices are:

The qualified, experienced and top guns who had been offered jobs elsewhere previously

The inexperienced

Slackers who couldn't work in an iron lung

The unqualified who would not get a job elsewhere (good middle management material though)

There are some good ones left but they are well hidden.

Everyone was a winner. The shareholders thought it was wonderful, those with a package thought it was great, Telstra's opposition picked up experienced staff, management achieved their staff reductions, the inexperienced and unqualified were promoted yippee!

The customers - well they are told in ads and other promotional material that the service is great and they are number one so it must be true, isn't it?

The previous organisation was by no means perfect and many improvements could have been made but I think it was far superior for the customers than what we have now.

[Rocker]

It sounds a bit like the current campaign by W*****c Bank to try to convince their customers that they would be far better served if they did not have a printed statement sent to them.

Rocker

[macca2]

Wood Borer, you are spot on the money. I was there for more years than I care to remember. I got out with the package and watched from the outside as the place went down hill.
I hear more complaints about service now than ever before. Both city and in the bush.

[HiString]

Yep, the Borers pretty close to the mark. SWMBO works (as a contractor) in the call centre. What p*sses her off is seeing so many of the permanents who are on better wages and conditions NOT doing their jobs correctly and NOT giving a rodents bum because they're too preoccupied with playing "office politics". Most of the supposed "team leaders" have spent little or no time on the phones and wouldn't really know what to do if they had to take a faults complaint................and God forbid if they encountered one of the many wankers that call in..........and I DO MEAN wankers.

[doug the slug]

So this is why Telstra has cut off my service twice in the last month AFTER i had paid the bill. they then told me i needed to pay a reconection fee, which they didnt get, of course. what made them look really stupid was that i had paid my bill online using the phone line they later cut off, before teh bill was paid.

A combination of the words ombudsman, breach of contract and taking business elsewhere resulted in a rapid reconnection within 30 seconds

BUt i still cant get adsl, broadband or even a dialup connection which connects at over 31.2 kb/s (or more usually 28.8) and i live in a town of over 3,500 people only a few km from a major regional centre. the politicians are all bleating about service in the bush, im not even in the bush and its crap

[Cliff Rogers]

... i still cant get adsl, broadband or even a dialup connection which connects at over 31.2 kb/s (or more usually 28.8) and i live in a town of over 3,500 people only a few km from a major regional centre. ...

This means that there's not enough copper in the ground to connect directly to the exchange so you go via device called a 'RIM' that connects the copper in your street to a fibre trunk to the exchange. The process is also called 'pair gain' & it multiplexes the usage over the link & that's why you can't get anything better than 31.2 kb/s (or more usually 28.8).

We had the same thing here but... someone who knew someone (low person in high place:rolleyes: ) wangled us one pair of copper direct to the exchange. We now have ADSL. :D

Try making a formal complaint to Tel$tra about your service & see if you can get it escalated to a 'person in a high place' to get a 'copper all the way pair.'

[HiString]

Like society in general, the basic communications infrastructure (copper wire) is being outstripped by the pace of technalogical growth. It was not designed to handle what in this day and age is being asked of it.

[Cliff Rogers]

...the basic communications infrastructure (copper wire) is being outstripped by the pace of technalogical growth. It was not designed to handle what in this day and age is being asked of it.

Are but it does work..... :rolleyes:
ADSL & ISDN both need it to be copper from your modem to the exchange....
it just can't go through a change to fibre optic before it gets to the exchange.

The dial up service will work reliably at 44K on pure copper too but is limited to 31.2K on the fibre interface.

When that copper first went in the ground they said it was only good for 3K but some clever dicks keep pushing the envelope & finding ways to make it go faster.... I remember the days when the Trailblazer came out & it could trick the old copper into going at 9.6K now they are getting 1.5M out of the same pair of copper wires. :D ADSL 2 can get 24M.

[Fat Pat]

Are but it does work..... :rolleyes:
ADSL & ISDN both need it to be copper from your modem to the exchange....
it just can't go through a change to fibre optic before it gets to the exchange.

The dial up service will work reliably at 44K on pure copper too but is limited to 31.2K on the fibre interface.

When that copper first went in the ground they said it was only good for 3K but some clever dicks keep pushing the envelope & finding ways to make it go faster.... I remember the days when the Trailblazer came out & it could trick the old copper into going at 9.6K now they are getting 1.5M out of the same pair of copper wires. :D ADSL 2 can get 24M.

Cliff, indeed the lines can push out pretty high speeds, though it does tend to taper-off fairly quickly the longer the throw from the Exchange/RIM/Whatever is out there (quite a few actually). Trouble is, the more data services on a particular cable, the less actual throughput everyone gets, as electrical interference between the various pairs ramps-up. The pairs aren't really designed for the new technologies ("Standard Cable" technology is decades old - never been a need to change) and the higher bandwidth being pushed down the lines, along with the increase in voltage - demanded by the increase in line length you mentioned - causes an certain amount of cross talk between adjacent pairs in the cable. Cross talk means noise, and noise means less throughput.

For a comparison, strip a length of (unused) CAT-5/5e cable and compare the twists in the conductor pairs with a typical length of phone cable. The CAT-5 has been designed to minimise the amout of Electromagnetic Radiation being thrown out by the pair, else it would limit the throughput of the data cable for the connected network. This is achieved by a very tight twist (3 twists per inch) wheras typical street cable is much less - I have seen some that is only 1 twist per 15 cm (OK, I work for Telstra) - which is not too condusive for keeping a cable noise-free.

Throw into the mix the fact that some of the cable "plant" has been in the ground for decades, and we are not going to see some of the benefits of new technologies for decades, let alone years. I can't get ADSL myself and I live 3.1 km from a RIM, and I KNOW all the blokes who provision the gear.

Ain't life a *****?

[Cliff Rogers]

Biography:
Ex RAAF RadTechG, 28 Yrs in Electronics, 26 Yrs in Computers....

[kiwigeo]

My thoughts on Telstra:

Telstra's service is cr*p and theyre sitting on an ageing copper network that's so decrepid its a timebomb waiting to go off. Broadband takeup in Australia is the third lowest in the world..simply because Telstra just hasnt bothered to spend the money to keep up with new technologies...the money has been diverted to the shareholders as healthy dividends to keep the share price bolstered up.

Under the leadership of Ziggy the poor state of the copper network and other issues got constantly swept under the carpet. Sol Trujillo has come on board only to find he's in charge of a company in a very poor state of health...possibly terminally ill.

Telstras share price has only stayed where it is because of its high dvidend yield....that cannot last and as soon as the yield starts dropping a large percentage of share holders like myself will be dumping the stock. That doesnt add up to a happy situation for the government as it tries to offload its remaining stake in the company.

Moving the governments shares into a future fund and releasing them over a period of time is only going to put off the inevitable...the government just isnt going to get the price it thought it would get for their shares and the company has a serious uphill fight looming against some serious competition.

[doug the slug]

well i had a visit today from a contractor working for telstra to fix my phoneline. mysteriously, a lind broke between my place and the rim about when he checked the rim before coming to talk to me and we had no phone for the afternoon. when i came home after picking up the kids from school i tried the phone but the noise on the line was even drowning out the dialtone. phoned through a complaint at 4.30 and was told a technician would contact me within 5 hours. its been seven hours now and guess what?????

[HiString]

Doug,

Were you given a test result by the consultant? Also were you told.........1) that a service specialist/tester would contact you, OR....2)were you given a commitment for a technician to attend?

:cool:

[doug the slug]

Doug,

Were you given a test result by the consultant? Also were you told.........1) that a service specialist/tester would contact you, OR....2)were you given a commitment for a technician to attend?

:cool:

no test result from todays test, just a line, an don reporting that i was told a tech would contact me with in 5 hours of 4.30 this arvo. anyone want to place a beton whether ive heard anything since the last post i made on this????

[HiString]

SWMBO is now in bed but frequently is "on the phones" (night shift) for said corporation. I gather it isn't uncommon for them to have to "defuse" and correct situations where incorrect or unclear information has been passed onto customers or where customers have misunderstood correct information. I suspect you wouldn't hear from a tech as I seem to recall that they knock off around 7pm, after that it is an after hours situation, also I suggest you check out what the "service standard" is, (what if any, is the guaranteed time for normal repairs).

:cool:

[AlexS]

Normally I don't touch anything telemarketers are selling, justy on principle, but as I was planning to go to broadband anyway, I took up telstra's kind offer, which included free installation. I asked for a copy of the offer in writing, but was referred to a website which didn't have the details, so made them go over the offer in painstaking detail, while I took notes.

Yesterday, I received a letter from their Head of Customer Sales & Service, thanking me for purchasing their product, a $249 connection fee. I tried to ring them immediately on the number I'd ordered the broadband connection on. "Sorry, all our operators are busy, leave your name & number & we'll get back to you within 2 working days." Well that's OK, but by then my 10 day cooling off period will be over.

This morning, an identical letter arrived. Managed to get through this time, but the operator didn't know anything about the deal. He arranged to get the person I'd dealt with to ring back, which she did. Assured me that I shouldn't have received that letter, & should just ignore it. Yeah, sure. Then the $249 will appear on my bill, I'll refuse to pay it, telstra will cut off my phone, I'll go ballistic (not a pretty sight) and no one will be very happy. I've insisted that they send me a letter confirming that there is no installation cost.

Since this happened, I've spoken to a couple of other people who've received the same letter from telstra. There are a few things that upset me about this, both as a customer and a shareholder. Firstly, since the problem of people receiving the wrong letter is not a new one, why wasn't it fixed immediately? Why did I receive 2 copies of the wrong letter - surely one would have been enough? How much postage has been wasted? If a telephone company can't answer its calls, should I expect their broadband service to be any better? Should I complain to my local polly - waste of oxygen that he is - while the government is still a shareholder?

My daughter wanted a Mickey Mouse outfit - so I bought her telstra shares. :mad: (Not really)

[outback]

As a result of the techo here the other day, I have been contacted by Mr Telstra. He told me I would need a repeater, it was at the planning dept, and he gave me his contact details.
Whilst a little sceptical, last time this happened it did at least give me one person to annoy the crap out of until something happened.

[Wood Borer]

Alex,

I suggest you call Telstra and ask them for the telephone number of the Telecommunications Ombudsman or the Australian Communications Authority (ACA) who investigate such matters. They have to give you the numbers but the request may ignite some action giving you the service you are paying for and deserve.

The problem will not lie with the technical staff but with the "come in late, leave early, aren't we wonderful" sales and marketing people who seem to specialise in ambiguity.

Chances are the people who contacted you are not employees of Telstra but another company who are paid commissions for every service they sell. They also possibly get a kickback every time you pay your bill. They say they are from Telstra but they are no more Telstra staff than a car salesman is an employee of the car manufacturer.

Good luck.