After my anti-Optus cartoon rant a bunch of people started whinging about to me about Optus just like I did (except without the biting satire and raccoons of course). The funniest thing is that before I drew this cartoon I called Optus PR and pretended to be a journalist ( I said I was a cartoonist) and I told them about the cartoon and they flapped about and all sounded lovely and said they would look into all my concerns and flippity flappity floppity get back to me.
So we publish the email and minutes later POING! I get an email from one of the people I spoke to at Optus, “Gwyneth” in which she refers to my various concerns and spells my name wrong. Twice.
So they can’t even deal with the media without buggering it up. Admittedly using “media” to refer to myself is bit of a long bow but I still work at Crikey so I mean really WTF.
A number of folk have suggested the TIO which is a marvellous notion if you are unable to get complex things like incorrect billing that Optus won’t resolve and so on. But it is dealing with the vast majority of stuff that doesn’t warrant the TIO but simply takes for ever that makes me want to claw out my own eyes.
And then there is the IVR at the front which seems to randomly deliver you to whoever it feels like. I never use the IVR anymore I just hit the # key every second or so until it says “I don’t understand you, so I will have to put you through to someone who will be the wrong person and it will probably take longer than if you did things properly and I aren’t I a pompous twat, we have purposely made this sentence really long to deter you from pushing the buttons the way you just did next time you call because you will probably think you would get through to the right person faster by going through the IVR properly”. However, I invariably end up with someone who can help (or at least says they can) or I get someone who sounds like an actual switchboard operator who puts me through to the “correct” department swiftly.
So this is a “we hate Optus and Telstra are beneath contempt” free for all. Bastards.
I have become so bitter
12 Comments
I really am dirty with Optus for its sneaky duplicitious response to my TIO complaint. Agnes from Adelaide told me Optus agreed I had paid the $227 demanded by the language-challenged ARL and Charter Mercantile collection agencies and it was all now resolved. Except! Her review of my accounts highlighted two unpaid amounts totalling $60 and $90 (even figures) still outstanding from phone accounts two years ago! To retrieve the credit rating I’d lost over the $227 Optus error I’d have to pay the amounts by credit card (no supporting paperwork). For the $150 it was worth getting rid of this bunch of sharks, scammers and fair trading misfits.
Oh yes. I too, had a nasty encounter with Optus. What did they do? Well, late last year I ported my mobile number from Optus to Vodafone (silly me, they aren’t any better). As far as I knew, all was resolved with Optus. They never sent me a final bill.
So then, about a month ago, I get a notice from a debt collection agency!! I call them and they tell me because I didn’t pay my bill (which I didn’t receive) then I now have to pay it to them PLUS a fee/fine/extra money to the agecy for collecting the money I didn’t pay to Optus.
No matter how many times I explained to the debt collector people that I had a real problem with paying a fine for not paying a bill I didn’t even know I had… they didn’t care. Of course.
So, I ring Optus customer service (hahahah!!). I speak to some slow-witted person who puts me on hold, and then eventually transfers me back to the debt collection people without letting me know he was gonna do that. Or that apparently he couldn’t help me. I am told by the debt collection people its not Optus’ fault if I never received their bill. I ask this annoying woman if somehow she’s implying that its meant to be my fault?? No answer, I’m told to pay up. I tell her I’m happy to pay the bill, but not their stupid fee. She tells me that until I pay their stupid fee, I am going to be in their debt.
I rage. Not surprisingly. And I do nothing about it for a bit. But I’m pissed because the debt collection people wave their scary threat in my face ‘oh, your credit rating could be affected if you don’t pay up and soon!’ Grrrrr!!
So I try again the next day – call Optus. Speak to one person who is utterly useless, because they can’t understand the concept that I never received their bill in the first place.
So I speak to another person and say this: “Here is what I want. I want to pay your bill, but I don’t want to pay the stupid debt collection fee, because if I’d received your bill at all, I would have paid it. Help me out here!”
Apparently I’ve found the one not-stupid customer service person in the whole call center. Let’s call him Milo. Milo is smart. He applies a credit to the amount I owe them, that’s the same amount as the stupid debt collection agency people’s fee. Hahaha. Apparently the stupid debt collection agency he spoke to in the process was rude to him (so it wasn’t just me, thankfully), and he sounded rather pleased with himself that he’d been able to help me out.
They should clone Milo and use him in call centers throughout Australia, until that is, they ship all call centers off to India.
The End.
I don’t have a death to optus or telstra story because I use pre-paid. Ahhh bless pre-paid. You might pay more for calls, but judging by the level of “service” on offer I think I may be paying less in the long run. I have never had to call up Optus (I am with them) and I hope I never do.
PS Unrelated to these two phone companies I just finished up with iinet for my broadband and they sent me a final bill (which I paid). A month later they send me another bill for 30 cents. Yes, 30 cents. Which they were going to automatically debit from my credit card. Now that’s awesomeness. The fees they would pay would come to more than that, not to mention the cost of sending the invoice.
Svasti aka YogaChicky
> Oh yes. I too, had a nasty encounter with Optus. What did they do? Well, late last year I ported my mobile number from Optus to Vodafone (silly me, they aren’t any better). As far as I knew, all was resolved with Optus. They never sent me a final bill.
blah blah blah
> Apparently I’ve found the one not-stupid customer service person in the whole call > center. Let’s call him Milo. Milo is smart. He applies a credit to the amount I owe them, that’s the same amount as the stupid debt collection agency people’s fee. Hahaha. Apparently the stupid debt collection agency he spoke to in the process was rude to him (so it wasn’t just me, thankfully), and he sounded rather pleased with himself that he’d been able to help me out.
My response:
What has happend here is that you have changed a debt to a credit. What are the odds you will receive a bill to pay off the credit because a person or computer can’t tell the difference between a debt or credit?
I too have had problems with optus, moved to an inland qld town, that was bad enough, but wanted to continue my account with optus. They said no way, (after about 3 phone calls, saying – yes way!) then find out the people in the house before us HAD optus phone and broad band. So call optus again – no can’t do no connection to the house ! So in frustration go to Go Talk, as hate to go to Telstra. But after a month of being stuffed around by go talk and non delivery or partial delivery of service, finally resigned myself to fact have to go to Telstra, as hardly any comm’s co’s deliver to this godforsaken town!
Then to add insult to injury Go talk continue to bill me for services two months after I cancelled service with them. Did they think I wouldn’t look at the bill and just pay up ?
The disturbing thing is that the alleged Optus-bot ‘Gwyneth’ couldn’t even spell “First Dog”
Sheesh.
Incredibly I now have an account manager at Optus. Even more incredibly it is NOT related to my potty mouth cartoon or my blog of whingery. It is simply because when I called to speak to PR about how I was doing a cartoon, I got put through to Customer Relations and they realised that with all my services I should have an account manager. And now I do, her name is “Michelle” and she is a total legend. It remains to be seen if she can fulfill all her alleged “promises”.
The Great Moi
I’m not sure if blah blah blah is intended to be rude or not. Perhaps it is. Oh well, lalalalala!!
Regarding your response. No, what happened is that Optus reduced the amount of debt they consider I owed them. They do this sort of thing all the time with no computer/person screw up. This was months ago now and I haven’t had a single issue. So, I’m fairly certain that the one competant customer service guy, Milo, did an excellent job. And that its all resolved.
Of course, I’m no expert in such things, and perhaps you are? Anyway, if I do get another bill for the difference, can I send it on to you?
Oh and on an unrelated note, AGL sent me a massive bill, telling me they were sorry they’ve taken a while to bill me and if I need longer to pay, I should get in touch. Call them, I did. To tell them that actually, I’m an Origin Energy customer and have never been an AGL customer.
That one could be interesting, as I was told by the person on the phone to send the bill back with a note explaining what I’d told her. I’m not laying bets on that one, as I think I’ll probably have to repeat this action several times before its done.
As a former call centre drone myself i’m speaking from experience that you can safely assume that Milo would be one of the few competent drones in that particular centre, you lucked out the Svasti well done!!
Round-and-round-the-call-center-we-go! My gripe with Optus is a new scam they are pushing on small business customers around the country. Ok well it’s not totally new but it is monopolistic in its goals.
So I call Optus and request additional phone lines for our small business, apparently small business are important so I feel lucky and important because now I am being redirected to a department in Optus specially for Small Business. *This is where my luck ends as I later discover.* Next I receive a phone call from the regional sales person for my area, and again I ask him “I would like two extra lines for our business please” to which he reply’s “sure no problem” but there is a catch they don’t want to give me physical lines (which are available to my premises) but want to group all my existing lines together into a DSL type service known as ‘Direct Line’
First a very basic lesson on our modern phone system. What is important to understand here is this, Telstra usually reserve two physical lines for each residential premises this is in the form of copper cable that runs from the exchange all the way to your home or business, if no short cuts are made e.g. RIM’s , you should have nice clean lines capable of voice and data. Now Telstra and Optus pass on line rental for the upkeep on those copper lines and it is expensive, so expensive in fact that they have found a way finally to reduce the burden of maintaining this but still passing on the fees to the customer *Customer Bitchslap*. How do they do it you ask? Well say a business, my business has multiple lines (4) and if you say run all four lines over a DSL (broadband) service using only (1) physical line you save line rental on 3 of the 4 lines –capuche. So what’s the problem you ask? Well the first problem is this, if you have four independent lines and one becomes faulty you still have three others as backup, this is important for small business as if and when your phone goes down you will need a way to keep in contact with your customers. The next issue is service, under the current customer guarantee there is a built-in safe guard for allowable time for installation and turnaround time for fixing problems of two days. Under the new ‘Direct Line’ product there is zero zip and nothing, as it is a digital issue. So if your phone line goes down good luck getting out someone to fix it.
Back to my gripe… So I requested a new line for our business and to be brief was told I wasn’t going to get a new copper line but rather this ‘Direct Line Product’, when I said I don’t want it I was point blank refused even though I had confirmation from Telstra that the lines were available. So I reservedly agreed to the service with the promise of not paying line rental on the lines that are removed. Ok now six months down the track I want two new lines, and because no service guarantee exists I have had to wait more than three months now for my order to be filled. I will mention that the TIO is a toothless tiger not suited for dealing with customer problems, and I am still paying line rental on every single connection.
Scam complete
Oooooh me next! Me! Damn I hate Optus. Just an absolutely unfathomable amount. I recently moved house, and upon ringing up and telling them that I’d moved, I was told that even though I was halfway through a 2 year contract (big mistake. Oh my reckless optimism), I’d have to re-sign another 2 year contract. What? Because I’d moved house? Surely somewhere along the line the smart Optus people factored in this possibility? Angrily, I asked to speak to a supervisor. Thank you very much, faceless Optus drone. I then had to identify myself again, and tell this newer, more superior sergeant drone the entire problem again. Same result. I asked to speak to a higher up. Again, I had to identify myself, do the ID check etc etc, and explain the entire problem again. Surely this general would help me, and explain some sense. Nope. Same result.
I have theorised that where many corporations have a divergent hierarchical tree, Optus has a circle. Plain ol’ circle. Round and round. So I angrily ask the cancellation fee and say I’ll call them back.
Anyway, so I called back later, ready to cancel, but no. No mention of re-signing another 2 year contract. It’s all fine. I clarified what was going to happen. All good. They said they would ring me back in 20 mins with my re-connection date.
5 hours later, no call. I call again, identify myself, AGAIN, explain the problem, AGAIN, and get told I will receive a call back in fifteen minutes . Half an hour later, I call back, explain the problem AGAIN, and get told the person who was supposed to call me back half an hour ago went home fifteen minutes ago. Round of applause. Deep sigh. However, this last person was able to tell me everything I needed to know on the spot, with no promises of callbacks or the run-around or anything. Re-connection date sorted, I could finally hang up, after thanking the last person for their help.
Conclusions? If only one out of every six Optus employees are able to service their customers effectively, then maybe Optus should sack 83% of their staff? I’m sure efficiency rates would soar.