A great Internet Service Provider overall. I have received pretty good service through their…read morecontact centre, as well as through their retail outlet at 133 Swanston Street Melbourne. Although recently I did come into a few problems. I decided to go back on contract from pre-paid due to breaking the original modem recently, so hence a new modem had to be purchased, and I wanted to do it in the most cost effective manner possible (minimum, if any additional financial outlay) so a 12 month contract for an extra 500MB of data than what I was currently paying on pre-paid was a smart decision. The SIM card was faulty. I was issued a pre-paid SIM card for a post-paid service which caused a bit of inconvenience, especially as a freelance writer where the Internet is literally your life line in the world of online journalism. I had to finally return to the store and get a new SIM card re-issued. So far so good. The service speed is excellent, and I am happy with the new modem. The old modem breaking out of the blue was a blessing in disguise as a new mobile phone with the sale of my old iPhone came out of this experience as well.

I was a TPG customer for a little over 8 months. Initially the 1Gb service was great, however it…read morequickly deteriorated to the point I was getting less than 50mbs at times. Despite multiple calls to the support desk and an on-site tech visit (where as Murphy's Law goes) the service wasn't too bad around 250mbs - the fluctuations in promised speeds were just unacceptable. My advice: Save yourself a lot of headache and just DON'T.......

These guys have some of the worst customer service I have ever experienced. It has taken,…read moreliterally, 17 calls to handle an issue regarding ADSL and another 7-8 calls to deal with a mobile phone SIM that never got mailed, 18 days after I ordered it. The ADSL Service itself seems fine; cannot comment on the mobile as it is still not working. The biggest foul seems to be "we'll call you right back with an update" and no one, ever, ever calls back. You have to stay on them. Then they act as if you are bothering them if you call. Cannot recommend them but cannot offer a better option.

It took a while but eventually support was able to fix the issues. Best to request a phone call and…read morenot use the online support ticket option

Stay clear. Emails are down and the bot takes you down a ribbit hole with no results. Been told…read moremultiple times that the problem is fix and give it 2 hours and it will be ready to go. And it is still not fixed. Customer service is horrible. The site is a nightmare to navigate compared to their old site. Moving ASAP.

Visited the Telstra shop in Malvern yesterday. There was no wait to be served and the staff were…read moreextremely helpful. Very impressed indeed.

So what is an American living in Australia to do when so much of the world's best entertainment…read morecontent is held behind an invisible wall that won't let me in even though I file taxes every year and my passport says United States of America? Surely I could somehow prove to the great gatekeeper of the internet (Al Gore?) that I am a true red, white and blue. No, region restrictions indiscriminately block access to content using your physical location as reported by your internet provider. So unless I resort to some method of trickery, I am left out in the outback with some of my favorite sites blocked like I'm some sort of international spy trying to access "classified" information. Thankfully there are ways to circumvent these region restrictions. There are essentially two basic methods for leaping over that wall into the land of endless entertainment. The first is using a VPN service which essentially changes your IP address so that the content servers "see" your location as being from an area without restrictions. In my case, I would pick a VPN that is located in the US to allow myself access to content from the US. It is a pretty simple concept that also has the benefit of protecting your identity and encrypting the data being transmitted. One of the drawbacks is that this method can slow the speed of your internet connection as it routes all traffic through your VPN's servers. That brings me to the second option for unblocking region restrictions; using a DNS changing service to allow certain web sites and applications to authenticate access to content. This method is more preferable in terms of maintaining internet speed because it does not require the transfer of all traffic through a VPN. In this case, once a server authenticates a user through DNS, the content is able to be viewed directly. One of the potential drawback to this option is that DNS service providers need to specifically configure the DNS to allow authentication for each device, application and web site that they will provide support for. This means that it is critical to chose a good DNS service provider that will support a wide range of web sites and applications on the devices that you use. Since I've been in Australia, I've tried a few DNS providers but the best so far has been from a company called SmartyDNS. For me, they have been the most efficient way for me to unblock restricted websites. They have also been the only DNS service to consistently unblock Netflix and unblock Hulu on all of the devices I use, including my Samsung TV and iPad. Try their Free Smart DNS (http://www.smartydns.com) trial for 14 days to see how it can unlock a world of entertainment content for you.

Hard to get excited about a Telstra shop, this one is fairly new, has good displays and friendly…read morestaff.

The customer service in this shop is so appalling, every single time I come in here to have…read moresomething fixed or changed, I am told it will be done and it is never done. I then have to follow up and ask why it wasn't done, only to be told they had forgotten. This has happened 4-5 times now. Seriously, you have one job... it blows my mind how poorly this shop is run. Oh one more thing, when your phone is ringing you should answer it, 9 times I have tried to call today.

This is just a really small mobile phone shop in the mall, but I'm rating it pretty high because of…read morethe terrific customer service. I was looking to buy one of those portable internet thingamabobbers and the man was really helpful in getting one. He gave his suggestions for the best plan and was pretty genuine about it as well. I got the pamphlet with a list of all the different plans, deals, and providers and ended up choosing a certain one. A few seconds later he pointed me towards another plan that was half off that he forgot to mention, which saved me about 40 dollars. Not too pushy, helpful, and saves me money. What a great guy.