Let's see if they honour their word.
From ninemsn
Telstra rebate for BigPond customers
Telstra BigPond has announced $25 million worth of rebates for e-mail service delays suffered by its 1.5 million customers.
BigPond customers will receive a rebate equivalent to two weeks payment for their internet connections, Telstra CEO Ziggy Switkowski said.
E-mails to Australia's largest internet service provider have been slowed by up to 48 hours over the past three weeks with BigPond blaming the Swen virus.
Dr Switkowski said the company would also provide customers with virus and spam filters, personal firewall software free of charge for three months.
"Now that we have determined the Swen virus is involved, we have been able to promptly consider appropriate customer measures and introduce them," he told reporters in Melbourne.
"Telstra apologises for any inconvenience caused by customers, and we understand our customers' frustration with email delays."
Dr Switkowski said the Swen virus had generated a 20 to 30 per cent increase in traffic on its networks in the past few weeks.
All of its e-mail customers had been affected by the virus which has slowed e-mails from the provider, he said.
He said Telstra was responding to the problem by increasing its network capacity by 30 per cent by the end of the weekend.
BigPond managing director Justin Milne said the company was confident it would have its email service running normally by next week.
"By the end of this weekend we will have added another 30 per cent capacity to our mail servers and we are pretty confident everything will be pretty much back to normal by next week," he said.
Dr Switkowski denied Telstra has been slow to act and had introduced the rebate only after the threat of class actions.
"Let me again completely reject that our actions of today are connected to speculation about any potential class action," Dr Switkowski said.
"I have on behalf of Telstra apologised and I do so sincerely for any inconvenience caused to our customers."
Dr Switkowski declined to discuss what compensation it might provide to its business customers affected by the virus.
"The focus of today has been on doing the right thing by our customers," he said.
"I don't want to be drawn into how we may or may not respond to other claims from other parts of our customer services."
The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) has received more than 100 complaints from BigPond customers which spokeswoman Rebecca Fredericks said was "unprecedented".
Ms Fredericks said the TIO would also be taking complaints from small business operators and assess claims for compensation, which could be up to $10,000 each, on a case-by-case basis.
Independent computer support company PC Rescue has also received about 100 client complaints regarding BigPond e-mails over the past three weeks.
Managing director Paul Wallbank blamed the difficulties on Telstra.
"They've had problems going on for at least three weeks on this matter," he told AAP.
"They've been giving us different stories about where it (the problem) has been rather than solving the problem."
©AAP 2003
- Forums
- General
- telstra bigpond rebate
Let's see if they honour their word.From ninemsnTelstra rebate...
Featured News
Featured News
The Watchlist
CC9
CHARIOT CORPORATION LTD
MD - Shanthar Pathmanathan, Geologist - David Trabert
MD - Shanthar Pathmanathan
Geologist - David Trabert
SPONSORED BY The Market Online