Here's Why

Last straw with Telstra

I just had a conversation with a Telstra employee about my increased bill. They claim that they have no record of me ever having a pension. I spoke to a Telstra sales person just last week who looked up my records and confirmed my pensioner discount. And very week for months I've been bothered by phone plan people, even door-to-door.

Telstra now say that they only give the Pensioner discount to customers who have long distance and local calls with them. So I don't get a discount anymore. They also claim this has been the case for two years. When I complained that I was never notified, they go back to saying their records show me as working for (get this): "Gab Prior and Matt".

When I first acquired this landline, I was in a share house with Gabrielle and Matthew, I wasn't working for them! Obviously their databases are corrupt, and totally trusted. The phone guy tried to persuade me that I'd never spoken with Telstra or written to them with my pension number, because it wasn't in the database.

So if there's no pensioner discount, and the line rental is outrageously higher (the copper was paid for decades ago), then there is no longer any point in dealing with Telstra. I refuse to make a deal over the phone or door to door. I need to see the figures on paper to see that any new plan is a better bargain than what I'm paying.

Telstra just changed from monthly to 3-monthly billing in advance. So my bill went up 3 times. If they're going to bill ahead instead of behind, then they are no better than the ISPs. They warned in their letter about the quarterly billing, but NOT about billing in advance.

I notice I'm still being charged $3 per month for the crappy ten year old phone they supplied. What a complete rip-off. Its somehow more blatantly offensive now that they're charging me three months in advance.

I haven't seen any evidence of any other company offering a Pensioner discount, but I might start asking for it from every phone plan scam artist. Sadly they will never commit their promises to paper.

For $60 per year, I may as well have a phone that does Skype and webcam.

About the author: Ian Woolf lives in Sydney, has a degree in Applied Science, worked as a solar astronomer, software engineer, systems programmer, webmaster, research assistant, Cisco CCNA tutor, Physics laboratory demonstrator, Computational Theory lecturer, and subject coordinator; while changing his career to freelance writing and broadcasting. Listen to Ian on the Diffusion radio science show on radio 2SER 107.3FM Monday at 6:30pm in Sydney or streaming audio on www.2ser.com, or listen to the Diffusion podcasts. You should follow me on twitter, here