Anatomy of A Failing Business

In the interests of brevity, I will omit all the details of my unhappy experience as a Telstra customer, but will summarise events of the recent past as follows:

1.   Several few months ago I apply through Telstra to transition onto the NBN.

2.   A few weeks later the related hardware (NBN connection box and Telstra modem) is delivered to my home.

3.   After a few days I contact Telstra to ask what now needs to happen to connect me to the NBN.

4.   I am informed that a technician from the NBN will contact me in coming days.

5.   None does.

6.   A few weeks later I make a follow up call to Telstra, during which I am informed that there is no record of my NBN order in the system, and that the order process will have to start from scratch.

7.   A few days later I receive duplicate hardware (NBN connection box and modem).

8.   After several days I contact Telstra to ask what now needs to happen to connect me to the NBN.

9.   I am informed that a technician from the NBN will contact me.

10.  Nothing happens for around three weeks.

11.   So I call Telstra who - after the usual security identification, explaining my situation (for the umpteenth time) and then holding on and waiting - I am advised to connect power to my new NBN connection box for a period of 24 hours and to then connect that to the incoming port to my house, as well as to connect my Telstra modem. My old Telstra modem is to be disconnected.

12.  I duly do so and for about the next three weeks I receive broadband internet service.

13.  On 13 October 2020, the internet service is disrupted.

14.   I duly contact Telstra.

15.   Telstra tells me that it is because I was still using cable broadband (!?), which has been disconnected, and that it will take 24 to 48 hours to re-connect to cable broadband.

16.   Three days later I am still without internet service, so I once again contact Telstra.

17.   After the usual security identification, holding on, explaining my problem (to more than one person), holding on some more, explaining my problem again, my cable service is restored.

18.   At the same time, I am advised that my second NBN order has been cancelled and that a new order needs to be initiated. (I kid you not.)

19.   I am instructed to contact Telstra again the following week to make sure the new order is still live. (Apparently, the customer needs to follow up to make sure Telstra does its job!).

20.   When I do contact Telstra as instructed, I am advised that a technician will attend my premises on 10 November 2020 between 08:00am and 12:00pm for purposes of NBN installation.  I receive e-mail confirmation, from no less than The Telstra Team, of this date and times.

21.   A few days later, another parcel containing yet another NBN connection box and Telstra modem is delivered to my house. (Uncanny as it sounds, I now have now received THREE separate sets of NBN boxes and modems).

22.   I make arrangements to be at home during the period 8:00am to 12:00pm on 10 November.  (Based, remember, on Telstra’s advice, per sms as well as received via e-mail.)

23.   On the day in question, no technician arrives during that time.

24.   At 12:50pm on the day I contact Telstra to inquire if the technician is still to arrive.

25. After spending more than two hours to-ing and fro-ing on the Telstra support app, I am advised that the technician visit is now scheduled for 24 November (!).


So, after having made specific plans to be available for a technician at the initial time advised by Telstra, no one arrives on that date.   

And, without any notification whatsoever, Telstra unilaterally changes the appointment date.


When I inquire about why this has happened, and whether the new date is indeed valid, I get the following message sent to me on the Telstra customer support app (quoted verbatim):

“Let me check our support and have this sorted out. Just give me an hour or two to have this sorted for you.”


That message was received by me at circa 3:30pm yesterday.

More than 24 hours have subsequently lapsed, yet I have still heard nothing more from Telstra.


I guess the Telstra support person got bored trying to resolve the issue.
That, or his/her shift ended and he/she headed out the door.




Juxtapose, if you will, that unhappy customer experience against the following inordinately more rosy, upbeat picture:




(Maybe I am the extreme outlier in being on the receiving end of this sort of contemptuous service.  But - based on my history as a Telstra customer - I somehow very much doubt it is only me who has been unlucky.)


In the light of the above, from the FY2018 result announcement I found this little gem:



It has taken Telstra some three months to process my NBN order (and the task is still not complete).

Accordingly, if my "customer experience" is reflective of the "significant improvement" that was foreshadowed by the company two years ago, then I shudder to think what it would have otherwise been like.

Maybe, instead of receiving NBN connections boxes and modems in mere triplicate sets, I might today have had seven or eight sets of them cluttering up my living room!

So much for the Great "T22" Vision.


If I owned a business which I discovered treated its customers in the manner described above, the managers of my business would promptly find themselves needing to ply their trade elsewhere.

But Penn et al... well, they simply keep presiding over this ongoing ineptitude while pulling in the big sheet bonuses every year.

(I wonder where Telstra would be today had it not had the luxury of having conned the Commonwealth into handing over tens of billions of dollars in exchange for Telstra's infrastructure for the NBN.)