{"id":198,"date":"2011-12-30T12:27:05","date_gmt":"2011-12-30T04:27:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vk6hgr.echidna.id.au\/blog\/?p=198"},"modified":"2011-12-30T12:27:05","modified_gmt":"2011-12-30T04:27:05","slug":"hello-how-can-we-not-help-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vk6hgr.net.au\/blog\/?p=198","title":{"rendered":"Hello, how can we not help you?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;d like to relate my experience trying to upgrade from a Bigpond Turbo modem to one of the new 4G ones. I have to vent my frustration, it really was so bad.<\/p>\n<p>I call 13 7663 and say to the robot woman, &#8220;new modem&#8221; and confirm I&#8217;m calling from the phone connected to the account. I spend a lot of time on hold (oh well. Speaker phones are awesome&#8230;) and the rep answers. &#8220;Welcome to Telstra, this is John.&#8221; &#8220;Hi, I&#8217;d like to upgrade my modem&#8230;&#8221; He says, &#8220;Hello? Welcome to Telstra, this is John.&#8221; More silence. Then he hangs up.<\/p>\n<p>Grr. Must be a bad line. I ring back, spend more time on hold. Rep answers, same thing. Can&#8217;t hear me. Odd. Because I was bored and had time to kill, I rang again. SAME thing. Wha?!?!<\/p>\n<p>I ring once more and this time I say &#8220;Sales&#8221; and say &#8220;No&#8221; to the &#8220;is this the phone you&#8217;re calling about&#8221; question. Rep answers, and hey, he can hear me this time. (I guess they don&#8217;t like taking calls about new modems from existing customers) &#8220;I&#8217;d like to upgrade to 4G.&#8221; &#8220;Ok&#8221;. Confirms my DOB etc&#8230; &#8220;Yes, the 4G wireless modem.&#8221; &#8220;No, not the wireless hub&#8221; &#8220;Yes, I know it&#8217;s wireless. I have a wireless account already.&#8221; (Under my breath \u00e2\u20ac\u201c you have that information on your screen. #%@!! Sigh.)<\/p>\n<p>Everything goes smoothly until he confirms the delivery address. &#8220;I&#8217;d like it delivered to my work, here&#8217;s the address&#8221;. &#8220;Oh&#8230; umm.&#8221;, he says. &#8220;That address isn&#8217;t linked to any of your accounts&#8221; &#8220;I know that, I just want the new modem delivered there.&#8221; &#8220;Sorry, I can&#8217;t do that&#8221;. AND HE HANGS UP ON ME. I know he hung up and the call didn&#8217;t drop out because the robot woman came back on and asks me to rate the call. Sure I rated the call. The score wasn&#8217;t high. :-\/<\/p>\n<p>Exasperated, I call again. I get to the stage, &#8220;I want to upgrade to 4G.&#8221; &#8220;You&#8217;ll have to pay a $17 cancellation fee&#8221;. &#8220;Why? It&#8217;s out of contract&#8221;. &#8220;That&#8217;s what the computer says. I can&#8217;t help you.&#8221;. At this stage I gave up. I said &#8220;ok, thanks&#8221; and hung up.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been a Telstra customer for years. Heck, I&#8217;ve worked for Telstra. Never in my life have I suffered such appallingly horrid customer service. How hard should it be for an existing customer to call and say, &#8220;hey, your stuff is so good I want to give you my money for another 24 months?!&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>With Bigpond, very.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;d like to relate my experience trying to upgrade from a Bigpond Turbo modem to one of the new 4G ones. I have to vent my frustration, it really was so bad. I call 13 7663 and say to the robot woman, &#8220;new modem&#8221; and confirm I&#8217;m calling from the phone connected to the account. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/vk6hgr.net.au\/blog\/?p=198\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Hello, how can we not help you?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants","category-telecommunications"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vk6hgr.net.au\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vk6hgr.net.au\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vk6hgr.net.au\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vk6hgr.net.au\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vk6hgr.net.au\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=198"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vk6hgr.net.au\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":199,"href":"https:\/\/vk6hgr.net.au\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198\/revisions\/199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vk6hgr.net.au\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vk6hgr.net.au\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vk6hgr.net.au\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}