An example of the gross errors in the Telstra Account Management System

Again I have had to spend weeks chasing Telstra to resolve a critical problem with their billing system.

I first became aware of the accounting issue on the 9th of June, and immediately called Telstra. After talking for quite a period of time just trying to explain what was going on, the consultant said it was going to take several days to clear up, and that I would get a call back before the end of the week to let me know everything had been resolved. My first mistake was hanging up the phone and letting the consultant get away.

The key issue was that in April I had the data plan on this SIM changed to a $39 per month for 3GB of data. 3 Gigabytes is 3072 Megabytes – and for those playing at home, this will become a very important number.

Telstra was only crediting me with 307 Megabytes of data each month. No, that’s not a typo – my permitted account usage in the usage manager was 307MB. You will notice that it’s very similar to the 3072 that I was meant to be getting, but just missing that final and exceptionally important “2″.

After several days went by, and I had heard nothing from the consultant who was going to write Telstra’s wrongs and get everything squared away – I called Telstra again. After some initial issues trying to explain that I had already had somebody looking in to the problem, and that I really should talk to them I was told by this new consultant that there were no notes on the account, and that she could assure me – no notes about the issue meant that nobody was going to be doing anything about it.

The new consultant however, was happy to start from scratch again, and try and resolve the issue if I could just explain my problem to her.

I started explaining that our business account manager at Vita Group had applied the change to my account, and that I was meant to get 3072 Megabytes of data per month, but was only being allowed 307. I continued explaining other particulars, and about half way through I was interrupted with her assurance that there is no 3GB account, and that it was I who was confused.

I told her that I had the email confirming the change in front of me, and read her an excerpt from it. Again, she interrupted telling me that there simply was no 3GB account, and there was nothing more she could do. Then, as I got the busy tone – I realised she had felt confident enough that I would just go away that the call had been ended for me.

It was now obvious that Telstra call centre consultants were either simply not equipped to resolve the issue, or that I just could not find one that was prepared to resolve the issue. I had tried contacting our account manager during this whole saga as well, but – there was no response from him (that was no surprise).

On I moved to the TIO. I completed my complaint and sent it off.

I will save you a lot of time but over the course of more then a week, every time I was told my call would be returned by my complaint liaison, it never was. I have had to call him to chase this up regularly.

So now we are nearly at a resolution, there may indeed be light at the end of the tunnel. I have an offer from Telstra to move me to a $49 per month plan, and that they will credit my account with $120.00 to cover the $10 difference per month for a year. This is indeed appreciated. The final sticking point however is the $1560 (at time of writing) that I have been overcharged for data usage, and the seven and a half hours I have spent chasing this issue.

Why should I be out of pocket for my time all because of incompetence at Telstra with systems, processes and staff? If I had contributed to this, it would be a different matter, but – not a single one of my calls has ever been returned when mutually agreed – and I didn’t cause the issue in the first place.