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Dealing With Big Companies - The other day I was doing some work from home when the internet just turned over and died. As I had been working on something important for the last hour or so and was just seconds away from pressing the proverbial "go" button I was a wee bit peeved. My boss was waiting for me to let him know that I was done so others could go ahead and do their stuff. I considered just picking up my laptop and heading over to my mother-in-law's house to finish off but we foolishly decided to ring Telstra and find out what the story was.
My wife eventually got connected to a very polite man who ran through a checklist to find out whether we had everything connected up right etc. AFTER that, not BEFORE which would have been logical, he then checked to see if there were any outages in our area which of course there were.
I heard her chatting away then all of a sudden she said "But! What? Huh? I'm sorry could you repeat that? Did you say 48 or 4 to 8?" At this point she shook her head and was blabbering to herself in a manic fashion so she gave me the phone and I continued: "If it's scheduled maintenance isn't it traditional to notify the customers that might be affected?" I said. "Ah yes sir for short outages all we're required to do is publish a notice in your local paper and that was done in this case" was his reply. I was flabbergasted! "So it is Telstra's opinion that 48 hours is deemed a "short" outage?". "Yes sir - anything up to 48 hours is a short outage".
Sadly, 48 hours without the internet in our household would probably mean that the police would be called at least once to attend a "disturbance" or a "fracas".
He then went on to tell me that in cases like this the people who complain the loudest generally get dealt with first. "Consider this a loud complaint then as I'm trying to work from home!" I said. Not to mention that my wife was tracking some things on Ebay...
To his credit the line was reconnected within half an hour and I finished my job in 90 seconds.
Dealing with large companies sucks.
I'd love to hear some of your stories.
My wife eventually got connected to a very polite man who ran through a checklist to find out whether we had everything connected up right etc. AFTER that, not BEFORE which would have been logical, he then checked to see if there were any outages in our area which of course there were.
I heard her chatting away then all of a sudden she said "But! What? Huh? I'm sorry could you repeat that? Did you say 48 or 4 to 8?" At this point she shook her head and was blabbering to herself in a manic fashion so she gave me the phone and I continued: "If it's scheduled maintenance isn't it traditional to notify the customers that might be affected?" I said. "Ah yes sir for short outages all we're required to do is publish a notice in your local paper and that was done in this case" was his reply. I was flabbergasted! "So it is Telstra's opinion that 48 hours is deemed a "short" outage?". "Yes sir - anything up to 48 hours is a short outage".
Sadly, 48 hours without the internet in our household would probably mean that the police would be called at least once to attend a "disturbance" or a "fracas".
He then went on to tell me that in cases like this the people who complain the loudest generally get dealt with first. "Consider this a loud complaint then as I'm trying to work from home!" I said. Not to mention that my wife was tracking some things on Ebay...
To his credit the line was reconnected within half an hour and I finished my job in 90 seconds.
Dealing with large companies sucks.
I'd love to hear some of your stories.
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