My hatred for you began just before I moved to the bush when
you had me blacklisted under the title“identity fraud” because I had the nerve to
purchase two mobile phones and an wireless internet connection from you, but
since you eventually cleared my name and admitted the mistake was yours I will
let that little incident go for the duration of this post.
I will also not mention the fact that I paid $50 a month for
internet connection that didn’t ever work for the best part of a year before
you finally admitted there was no available 3G service and agreed to close the
account with no cancellation fee.
So anyway, upon moving here and receiving new phones for my
husband and I, I was assured I would have “excellent” mobile phone reception in
my new rural location. It is true that I do indeed get (intermittent)
reception, although one bar is not really considered excellent in my book and I
can only achieve said single bar if I stand clinging precariously by one hand to
the front veranda post whilst leaning into oblivion with my head tilting just a
little to the left.
As the thought of falling to my impending doom should I ever
want to make a phone call was unattractive at best, I decided to do the
sensible thing and set up a home phone account too so that if one of my
children were bitten by a deadly brown snake or the husband rolled the tractor
I would at least have the ability to phone 000.
Now the home phone account was set up at the bargain price
of $69 per month and has proceeded to die every single time we get more than
half a mm of rain, first it goes crackly so you can’t hear the person on the
other end which may I add can make for a whole lot of future awkwardness when
you think you are talking to the husband you had the best sex of your life with
that morning and it turns out to be your mother in law.
Then after about 48 hours of “What? What? Who is this?
Hello?” it will kark it totally and there is no longer a dial tone.
Now in case you live in another country or deep in a cave
somewhere, you will have noticed how over the last little while eastern
Australia has been getting rather a lot of rain...
Every time this happens I assume my veranda hugging position
and with my life on the line I phone up the ‘faults’ department. Where they are
unable to hear me properly due to poor reception and after a bunch of ‘pardon
me?’ and ‘can you please repeat that’ and 'do you realise your phone servive is not good?' I find out I have been transferred to the
wrong department.
Finally it gets sorted out and after the lovely friendly
consultant promises me someone will be out to fix the line within the next 7
days I am asked to hold and answer a survey question on my experience – but not
before the consultant assures me it is only to rate HER PERSONAL performance
and to please not let it reflect my views of the company.
Without fail on day 7 somebody called Trevor who looks like a cross between Hagrid and an axe
murderer in a phone company uniform always arrives and temporarily fixes it
until of course the next time it rains
again and we go back to square one.
Two weeks ago my phone died AGAIN, but this time Trevor never came.
So after pondering for a few days if
perhaps another happy customer finally snapped and took it out on old Trev, I
decided to call up the company again and find out.
By the time I have been redirected through ‘ADSL’, ‘Mobile
Services’ and ‘Sales’ it has been 40
minutes and my foot and arm are asleep from clinging to the post in the icy
wind. I finally connect to someone who CAN help me a lovely sounding lady, and my
mobile battery went flat.
So dear unnamed telecommunications giant, I’m more angry than
Matthew Newton and have developed a twitch in my right eye. If there was ANY
other telecommunications companies that
serviced my area I would have given my children up to be with them. In the
meantime while my mobile battery charges, may God help Trevor if he turns up before I
have had a coffee and some zanax.
Have you ever been f$#ked around with by a
telecommunications company?
