iPhone 4S not even ordered.. Switching to Telstra after 10 years on Optus could not be harder. This is bullshit customer service.
Posted Monday, October 17, 2011 at 8:59 pm by Jason Cartwright
First off, I never swear in posts, so hopefully that gives you a scale of how annoyed I am right now.
After 10 years on Optus, I have had enough. Telstra seriously didn’t need to do much to get my business, but the experience has been an absolute joke. Below is a timeline of my nightmare experience of trying to switch to Telstra. Remember this is an effort to sign a 2 year contract that would net them at least $2,000 on top of the home phone and internet I already pay. As history would evidence, I tend to stick to a carrier once I’m there, so there’s potentially a lot more on offer if they look after me with good customer service.
September 27th – The day Telstra’s expression of interest page went live, I signed up immediately to get the latest news like a good little potential customer.
October 5th – Rose at 3am to watch the iPhone 4S be officially unveiled by Apple.
October 8th – Signed up as soon as Telstra’s pre-order page went live.
October 12th – Went to the local Telstra store in Wodonga, was told I would receive a call on launch day. I made a point of letting them know I’m switching to Telstra after 10 years with Optus.. i.e. Look after me, but got no call. (This from the same store who botched my first attempt to move to Telstra only a few months ago). I was told that my best chance of obtaining an iPhone 4S as soon as possible was using the online pre-orders.
October 13th – I was called by Telstra to confirm my licence details and the order before it could proceed. I enquired if going to the store would be a faster way of landing an iPhone 4S, but was told proceeding with the online pre-order was indeed the fastest way. I was told I was ‘in the first batch’.
October 14th – iPhone 4S goes on sale, during the day I heard from a number of friends that local stores in Albury Wodonga did indeed have stock. At this point, I felt locked into the online process and frustrated that I’d been specifically told twice in the past 2 days that I was indeed using the best method available to secure a device. I avoided rushing to the retail store to vent my frustration as I wanted to avoid another screw-up that could potentially result in signing up to 2 contracts for the iPhone 4S. Since then I’ve read on the Telstra forums that this indeed has happened to a number of Telstra customers.
October 17th – With no communication over the weekend, I enquired about the status of my order today via twitter, then online form as directed. Others had received shipping emails to let them know their phone wasn’t far away, but I had received nothing since the verification call. Tonight I received an email to let me know, not that my phone would reach me soon, but the order hasn’t even been processed.
Dear Jason,
Firstly, it’s great to hear that you will be upgrading your handset with Telstra to the iPhone 4S and would be more than happy to assist further with an update on your order.
I can appreciate your frustrations with the delay that you have experienced in receiving an update on how your order is tracking at the present time and apologise for any inconvenience that this has caused you. I can confirm that we have received your online order and this has been assigned to one of my colleagues to have the order finalised and verified for you. They should be in contact with you very soon to have this order completed correctly in the system allowing the device to be sent out. We have received such a large demand for these handsets that has lead to some delays in processing the orders, but we are trying to have them completed as quickly as possible and not have any errors with these orders as well.
Once again I am sorry for the delay, and if you have not heard anything within 48 hours of this email being received please reply and I will have this escalated to my manager to see what we can have completed to speed up this process.
Best Regards,
Dingo
Social Media Team
www.telstra.com
Business rule number one people, do not make it hard for people to give you money ! Apologising for any inconvenience has become an obnoxious excuse for incompetence. It does not excuse the fact this has been a horrible experience. At this point I’m ready to say forget the whole thing.
Update
I have now cancelled the order.
Update 2
I now have an iPhone 4S on Telstra. Shortly after this post went up, a GM at Telstra reached out to me and appologised profusely for the experience I had. We discussed how they could modify business practices to avoid this type of experience from happening to anyone else. I’m glad my complaints were finally heard and real action is being taken to improve things. As compensation they offered (and I accepted) a 64GB iPhone 4S for the price of the 32GB. The local store in Wodonga also threw in a case.
How long is an acceptable wait to get connected?
Posted Wednesday, February 23, 2011 at 11:23 am by Jack Cola
We all have a mobile phones, we all use the internet, whether it being wireless or fixed line and most of have a landline phone; but getting these services connected can sometimes be a little bit of a hassle.
Almost one and a half years ago, I moved interstate, which means, I need to get the landline and internet connected. Because where I previously lived, Bigpond was pretty much the only option, I now had access to a wide variety of ISP’s. So I narrowed it down to two ISP – Optus and iiNet. My main criteria where cheap/free phone calls, and a reasonable amount of internet quota.
Optus offered me $129/month, free landline & mobile calls with 30GB internet and iiNet offered $70/month with Naked DSL, free landline calls and 50GB quota. I originally chose Optus, thinking they where offering a traditional landline (not VOIP) so I could use a fax machine (and plus there number was cool it had six 8’s in it). So I went online to order to get their 3 months free access. However, they couldn’t find my house, and I was to call them. Anyway, I put the order through, a few days later; they called me up (was a nice bloke) saying you have to pay $300 to put a line to my house. I said to them, there is an Optus line going to my house – I can see it. They said, sorry, there isn’t one. So I went to iiNet, put through the order and they rang me up, and they too said, you have to pay $300 to put a phone line to your house. I said the same thing. There is a power line, a Telstra line and an Optus Cable line. So both of us did some investigation and troubleshooting to see what the problem is.
A couple of days later, one of our friends said, “you know the suburb you live in was originally called this, not that”. “Oh”. I rang up iiNet, gave them the suburb other suburb name; and look, they can see a line to the house.
So, the order went through, I got Naked DSL with iiNet and the BoB modem. 10 days later I got connected, but didn’t receive my modem. BoB came a little later on, but didn’t come with a handset. In the end, it took at least 2 months to get the internet connected after going through both Optus and iiNet.
This week, I signed my mum up to a post-paid plan with Virgin Mobile. I ordered online to get the 3 months free access on Thursday. Put the order through, and got the phone on Tuesday. However, I cannot activate because Virgin Mobile is coincidently updating their systems and they’re offline – 24 hours over their original ETA it’s still offline, so therefore, I cannot activate the service. As I mentioned in my Blog, I went down to All Phone, purchased a phone there and then and it worked within a few hours, not 6+ days I have been waiting because I ordered it online.
So my question is to everyone, how long do you think an acceptable time frame to get connected? Is 2 months to long for internet; is 6 days to long for a mobile? Let me know.
Image Credit: Freeview & Virgin Mobile
Optus iPhone customers get streaming ABC and SBS 24/7 free
Posted Monday, November 22, 2010 at 9:07 pm by Jason Cartwright
A very welcome SMS arrived today on my iPhone 4, alerting me to the fact there’s a new iPhone application from Optus available. It’s called Mobile TV and provides Optus iPhone customers with free access to ABC and SBS 24/7. As an added extra, there’s also the Today show from channel 9. Even better news is that streaming this content doesn’t count towards your monthly cap.
One downside is that you can’t connect via Wi-Fi, obviously so the app can detect your connected through the Optus network.
If your wondering why Optus would give this away for free, its really an entry into their premium mobile channel offerings. What I’d actually be interested in paying for is having IP-delivered video from all the free-to-air networks.
Available via iTunes
Windows Phone 7 launch a messy fragmented nightmare
Posted Friday, October 29, 2010 at 5:10 pm by Jason Cartwright
Those paying attention to the mobile space would know that Windows Phone 7 launched (kind of) in Australia last Thursday. To say the launch was fragmented would be a massive understatement. To begin the ‘Australian launch’ was really a Telstra launch, as only WP7 devices being sold through Telstra were available on October 21st. If you thought there’d be midnight launches or round the block cue’s for WP7 devices forget it. Incredibly there was only 11 Telstra stores on day 1 that had launch hardware. Even those buying with Telstra faced severe shortages for the past week since launch. Not only that, but if you’re outside a metro area, forget about it. I know only a single person that has managed to secure a HTC Mozart outside capital cities (see my hands-on).
The news is even worse for Optus and Vodafone customers, if you had your heart set on a WP7 device from these carriers, your out of luck. The Samsun Omnia 7 for example is currently only available on a business plan and will only reach consumers (in some metro stores, with very limited supply) next Thursday 4/11/2010 – 2 weeks after the official #WP7AU launch.
All this is contrasted by the previous 3 iPhone launches. Despite living in regional Victoria – Albury Wodonga, I have been able to secure an iPhone every single time on launch day. Microsoft strength is supposed to be their hardware partners, however it seems for the WP7 launch they have failed Microsoft. How on earth a single company – Apple has a better manufacturing, supply and distribution chain that Microsoft hardware partners that have been doing this for much longer is simply amazing.
Even this morning Steve Ballmer had to stand on stage at PDC 2010 and say WP7 will ship to the US shortly… Seriously what is going on that Microsoft launched in NZ and Aus prior to the US ? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad for those few that were able to secure a WP7 early, in the technology industry, little old Australia with 22 million people is very rarely one of the first launch countries.
I want to love WP7, but Microsoft and their partners are making it really difficult with a dysfunctional launch like this. Also if you’re thinking the websites of Optus, Samsung, LG would be providing information about WP7.. forget it.
More info @ The Age and WindowsPhones
Australian iPad data plans compared: which should you choose ?
Posted Wednesday, May 26, 2010 at 1:38 pm by Jason Cartwright
The battle is certainly on for iPad customers. Vodafone and 3 have announced their data plans today, while Optus and Telstra revealed theirs weeks ago. So with so many options, which should you choose ?
It’s important to remember Apple’s iPad is not 900MHz compatible, which means that in areas covered by this spectrum, your speeds will drop, dramatically (3G to 2G if you like). Coverage is definitely a key consideration when choosing your provider, being connected while away from home is after all the reason you’d opt for the 3G version of the iPad in the first place. The 3G + WiFi model comes at a higher cost, so you’d want to make sure that pays off in being connected more often. It’s not enough that your just connected, rather that your connected at a speed fast enough to allow data-rich applications function correctly.
The sad truth is the current situation in Australia is that Telstra has the best coverage, but they do charge premiums for it. Optus is investing heavily in catching up in coverage, while the success of the iPhone and high data usage has meant metro areas suffer from issues. The other two providers Voda and 3 try to catch up with partnering deals, but have to offer lower cost deals to compensate for less coverage.
Telstra iPad pre-paid plans [more info]
| 1GB | $20 |
| 3GB | $30 |
| 6GB | $60 |
Notes: Unused data expires after 30 days.
Optus iPad pre-paid / post-paid plans [more info]
| Data | Cost | Expiry |
| 2GB | $30 Starter Kit | 30 days |
| 500MB | $15 | 15 days |
| 1GB | $20 | 15 days |
| 3GB | $30 | 30 days |
| 4GB | $40 | 30 days |
| 5GB | $50 | 30 days |
| 9GB | $70 | 60 days |
| 8GB | $80 | 186 days |
| 12GB | $100 | 60 days |
| 14GB | $130 | 60 days |
| Data | Cost |
| 2GB | $20 per month |
| 3GB | $30 per month |
| 8GB | $60 per month |
Three iPad pre-paid /post-paid plans [more info]
| 500MB | $15 |
| 2GB | $29 |
| 4GB | $49 |
| 12GB | $149 |
| 1GB | $15 per month |
| 3GB | $29 per month |
Vodafone iPad pre-paid plans [more info]
| Data | Cost | Expiry |
| 250MB | $9.95 | 30 days |
| 1GB | $14.95 | 30 days |
| 4GB | $29.95 | 30 days |
| Unlimited | $49.95 | 30 days |
| 6GB | $100 | 180 days |
| 12GB | $150 | 365 days |
Notes: Unused data will rollover if recharged before the 30 days expire.
Which deal is best for you ?
The answer to this question is very location specific. If you only intend on using your iPad in a major city, coverage isn’t really a concern, if you want to use it while travelling, then check coverage maps. As for the amount of data you’ll need, it’s to remember that both uploading and downloading data counts as data usage.
Light users
1GB for $14.95 on Vodafone is great value for money. Whilst certainly not the cheapest entry point, I think 1GB should be plenty of data for most users. the 250MB Vodafone plan is only a quarter of the data, but only saves $5 a month.
Medium users
The entry level 3GB for $30 plan on Optus is a nice mid-point.
Heavy users
If your want Unlimited data use, Vodafone’s unlimited $49.95 plan is what you want.
If you haven’t selected your iPad 3G+Wifi model yet, check that out at the Apple site.
Optus will support iPhone MMS
Posted Tuesday, June 9, 2009 at 6:03 am by Jason Cartwright
In an FAQs: iPhone OS 3.0 Software section of their website, Optus have outlined the cost of MMS to iPhone customers. This confirms Optus will indeed offer MMS to iPhone customers. This has been a question mark since Apple announced Software 3.0 would include MMS support, with the caveat of “not available on all carriers”.
So it’s great to know Optus will support the feature.. if you know of other Australian carriers also supporting MMS on the iPhone, please leave a comment.
Confirmed. Optus does support MMS.
After downloading the latest developer build of iPhone OS 3.0 this morning, I am now able to send MMS messages on Optus.
More @ Optus
