Wednesday 18 October 2017

The Telecommunications Ombudsman

is clearly in need of more staff to help her. She is overwhelmed with complaints about the state of our phone and internet services.  There are reports that these are up 41% nationally and 51% in this state in the past year.
Yes, I know people are now quite unable to go about their daily lives without being constantly in touch. 
And yes, I am one. I work from home. The internet is my work life-line. 
Yesterday I added to that growing list of complaints the Ombudsman has received. I tried not to do it. I really did try not to do it. 
The problem is that my internet service provider is not even meeting the basic contractual obligation - to provide me with a service. It keeps dropping out - not just occasionally, not just once a day but many times a day. On Monday it dropped out eleven times altogether. Yesterday it was only seven...yes, only seven. 
Each time I have to go through the process of trying to get it up and running again. It has dropped out as I am typing this which means that, before I can post anything, I have to go through the process again. 
I have been told I can get a "better" service if I pay more but why should I? This service is advertised as the one which meets my needs. If it worked as advertised it would more than meet my needs. I don't play games on the internet. I don't watch movies. I download documents. I upload documents. I do a little searching and (horror of horrors) I write a blog. That's about it. So why should I need to pay for a premium service with features I won't use - and which, from all accounts, is not much better than the service I am now supposed to be getting? 
I was also told I could go with another service provider if I wasn't satisfied. Hold on a moment that's not meeting your contractual obligation to provide a service - not just to me but to everyone else who has complained. 
I know the NBN is a problem but it is not the only problem. Internet service providers are using the problems with that to make an additional profit by simply cutting back on their own costs and not providing as much service.
Sorry but it simply won't do. I have complained. If they had bothered to answer my registered letters and apologised in any way I might not have done it...but I have had enough. Now to see if I can get the "service" up and running again so I can post this.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you think this may be a way of running the NBN into the ground, so Saviour Private Enterprise can come in and take over at minimal cost? And perhaps not do any better? Or privatise the gains and socialise the losses?

NOW, internet connection etc etc etc should be like water, gas, sewerage - provided well and economically to everyone. So many livelihoods (yours, farmers', everyone's almost) depend on good communications.

My husband is also one of the complainants to NBN and Telstra. It keeps him very busy.

LMcC

Jodiebodie said...

The service providers (or non-service providers as they seem to be) like to blame the NBN but my street doesn't have the NBN yet and our service delivery has deteriorated severely over the last 24 months as well. It worries me that when the NBN does come here, I will need to relinquish my reliable landline voice phone service to a poorer sound quality VOIP phone service that relies on the internet connection to work. I can look forward to phone dropouts in addition to the internet dropouts that we currently have. NBN - I don't want it.