Wednesday, January 07, 2009

Telstra you go to hell!

This will be a short story about Telstra ripping off my father in law so if you’re not interested then stop reading.

My father in law (FIL) and I get on pretty well. He has a nice house and chose to have Bigpond cable connected to the house it’s been like that for ages (since the cable was planted in that street). He was paying 59.95$ p/m for cable for 12 Gb download. (I personally don't think this is a good deal anyway)

A rep from Telstra on the 22/12/08 called him to offer a newer faster Internet for less money. This enticed my FIL to sign up to replace the cable account as he though he would be saving money and still getting the same deal / downloads / faster internet from the same vendor What was agreed to on the phone was a 12 month plan on the wireless NextG at 29.95 a month.
FIL 6/1/09 finally had the contracts e-mailed sent through and to my utter disbelief my FIL has been taken for a ride.

Telstra supposed upgrade was to move him from fast cable Internet to NextG wireless. FIL was told that wireless Internet is much faster than standard Internet and that's a reason to upgrade. NextG isn't faster than cable. How could it be?
The actual contract send and was Telstra NextG wireless 1 GB @ 59.95 P/m with a 250$ per Gb over charge. His average usage while on cable is 4+ Gb a month. Also the contract terms had been extended from 12 to 36 months.

I can't believe the balls of Telstra to go ahead and take advantage of someone who was told he was going to get a better Internet for cheaper.

I had to ring up Telstra on the FIL behalf and explain the situation he's been placed in and I asked for a "Please Explain" and was told, "I have no idea why Telstra would of offered that."
All I can say I've not liked Telstra for ages now and this just re-affirms that Telstra is to big now and has lost control of its own employees to allow them to take advantage of the unassuming end users who get promised the world and delivered shit in a can and without a can opener.