Ah the saga of trying to become a Telstra customer - I knew I shouldn't have expected anything else…read morethan the dismal and offensive lack of customer service!!! Having experienced massive drama's previously with Telstra landline connections, Telstra mobile account, previous ADSL connections and also with their business cousin Commander services (yes, I know they pretend to be separate from each other) what was I thinking it would be any better this time!!! Not to mention being badly burnt as a Telstra shareholder, losing significant capital value in shareholdings - how stupid could I be to try and bring down upon myself even more pain! BUT there was a method to my insanity. For a range of reasons; needing improved internet access for business connectivity from my home office to my business locations I thought to myself - NBN is still several months away from becoming available at my location (despite being literally surrounded on every side by neighbouring suburbs already connected to NBN; and physically just about 800m from the Telstra exchange - at the end of my street)- why not go with a Telstra cable connection for the time being, which will switch across to NBN when the little men in their little vans who park outside my front door every 2nd day work out how to join our suburb to the rest of the neighbouring suburbs. My wife of course thought I was crazy to even try, but hey, what could she possibly understand about the intricacies of such advanced technology in porting our fully operational ADSL + voice services from a Telstra re-seller ISP over to Telstra ISP, in an exclusively Telstra exchange footprint (No Optus available). - I figured she should stick with the simple stuff like rocket science & brain surgery! So off I trot to do the deal with the salesperson (let's call him P218681 - that's apparently his surname anointed by the Telstra gods) at the local Telstra Shop (yes I know they aren't actually Telstra employees, they work for the "shop business owner" as agents for TLS).but nevertheless he was extremely explicit about how well I should rate his services along with the actual Telstra connection services when they send me a survey. He even told me what score I should give him! How helpful is that! We discuss the current offer, correct my account details (yet again for about the 5th time), confirm my identity (just in case someone else was wanting to go through all this pain and suffering in my name) and confirm the services are available at my address. Seems all pretty straight forward so far doesn't it HA HA HA more fool you and me both!! My good friend P218681 plays with his computer for a while (tells me how bad the interface system is as we wait for extended periods whilst it thinks and eventually I'm "booked in" for a professional connection technician to come and unwrap the box for me next Friday - so I should stay home from 12noon onwards ready to welcome him/her and a 2nd professional technician to follow a couple days later to change my existing fully operational phone outlet into a phone outlet and I should stay at home from 8am to 12noon to welcome him/her as well. Now with the wonders of all this wonderful technology I received 5 emails telling me about my glorious new service, what my account will be, what my shiny new telephone number will be, confirming my appointments and just in case I'm stupid I even get 3 text messages on my mobile confirming once again when I should be waiting with arms open for the magical technician to come and open the box and plug in the power cord. They even went so far as to tell me what I should do if I needed to reschedule by telephoning/emailing Telstra to make any changes. (One would think they would also do the same???) Now just in case I am stupid, I made sure to look at my phone and it very cleverly tells me the time and so at the designated time of my "booking" I was ready and waiting. And waiting And waiting Then after business hours and the designated 4 hour window had expired I started to get a little suspicious - maybe I was stupid after all - surely I had misread the 5 emails, personal conversations in the store, paper copies and the 3 text messages on my phone. No one from Telstra had contacted me to reschedule they just didn't bother to turn up. So I went online to the 24/7 help centre who claim they are there to assist - oops my mistake yet again - they don't actually assist, they're in the Philippines (I believe), and there's no one available in Australia. After 37 minutes of online chat with Pradeep he tells me to phone someone in Australia tomorrow. Next morning I telephone and meet my newest friend D868372 who tells me during our 44 minute conversation he can't help either because no one is working in the connections department, but not to worry he will follow-up to make sure this matter gets sorted as soon as possible. I thought I should also check if my 2nd booking for the following day was still proceeding and he tells me that

After a disappointing visit with my mobile provider I then walked into Vodafone runaway bay where I…read morefound the customer service I had been craving. John Watson was the most helpful phone person I have ever come across and nothing was too hard to explain or too much trouble to do. I went in on a whim with little expectation and left on a cheaper plan with infinitely more for my money and feeling of importance. But wait, there's more, some time after leaving the store I received a call from John to tell me they were having difficulties with old provider and should have it fixed ASAP. Thank you Vodafone and thank you john. Can't wait for your company's foray into line rental and internet.