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.

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

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.

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?

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 ?

> 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?

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.