Learn how not to treat your customers by dealing with Telstra!

I thought I would share a recent experience with Telstra. I was amazed at the lack of customer focus this company has even though we are in tough economic times and the competition in the telco industry is growing!

I was checking over my latest bill (something I haven't done for a long time) and discovered that Telstra had been charging me $5.95 a month for a dial up service. Now I know what you're thinking! What a bargain! Where do you get internet access for $5.95? Well... the answer is that you don't, and I didn't. In fact, I had never ordered this service, and if you rang telstra and said you wanted to go onto the $5.95 per month internet plan I am sure they wouldn't have a plan that low.

So I checked all my bills to see how long they had been sneaking this charge onto my account, and discovered it had been charged for the past 20 months! A whopping $119 for nothing...

No big deal I said... "I just call them and sort it out" - hmmm, I thought it would be simple to fix - BIG MISTAKE.

They said it was my responsiblity to check my bills and that their policy was to only refund the last 3 months. Regardless of the fact that they agreed that this was a wierd charge, and was never used.

I do have an option, it is to fill in some 'request for credit' form and send it off to them hoping that they will alter their refund policy for me...

To them, I am just an account number, I spend several thousand dollars with them every month, and this is the service that I recieved!

Telstra, a simple "I'm sorry, we'll rectify that for you and apologise for charging you for something we shouldn't have" would have been nice, instead, you want me to jump through hoops because I trusted you (silly me) and didn't check my bills in great detail.

The cost to Telstra - well, now I tell the world what they're up to by use of the internet... and hopefully Karma will bite them in the arse some day!

now run off my friends and check your bill!