Optus Mobile Support
Last night I opened my mail to be met with my usual Optus Mobile bill which I have been responsibly and regularly paying for at least 12 years. And I mean a consecutive service, unblemished, excellent payment history, no complaints type of 12 years.
Rewind 3 weeks ago ago. My voicemail had stopped working (not sure why) and I thought it prudent to re-enter “leave a message with Colin” status with my friends, family & clients – hence a quick call to Optus Technical Support – and I mean quick. 3 minutes from call to resolution quick. It was so quick, I even Twittered it (April 13th) and bounced it around my Facebook, which got a raft of postivie (and disbelieving) comments around how damn lucky I was. Until last night.
I have a really cool Blackberry Curve – it delivers emails to me, is bulletproof, ultra reliable, great battery life and my connection to the ether. I love it. It’s on what Optus call a Blackberry Platinum $79 Cap, which really, to us mere mortals, means I get unlimited email. Suits me fine.
When I was chatting to Optus Tech Support, they swiftly reconnected my voice mail and asked – “was there anything else I would like assistance with?”. Enter Twitter. I mentioned this to the tech rep, who up until this point had been sensationally helpful and quizzed him around the “cost” incursion. Cost? None – because he would set me up to use the Blackberry Browser…. Okay, this means nothing to me, because the GPRS (yea not 3G) connection is so damned slow, it’s not worth it. Connect me up, so long as there isn’t an inconvenience (or cost) around this. Cool. Connected. Twittering.
So to last night. I’ve incurred data charges of $1617.13.
Huh? Is my first response. Confusion, as GPRS ain’t exactly, you know fast. Nor have I been perched on Twitter for endless hours. Most of the time my phone if not looking at the diary, or making a call, it’s locked. Further, I’ve configured my Blackberry to switch off each night at 11pm and awaken at 6am, so the window to download is even smaller. Annoyance, that no one has rung me about this. Double Annoyance that Optus have halted its 24 hour support to a piffling 8:30am to 6:00pm scenario. Triple annoyance when I relook at that bloody hefty bill which has occurred in less then a 2 week period
So. I’m sitting here on the phone, to Billing Support now, awaiting to see what Optus have to say for themselves. I’ve been with them a long time, paid my bills promptly and generally have been exceptionally pleased with both the service and quality of the products.
Let’s wait and see.
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Update: May 7th, Spoke to Optus, they have already auto processed the bill and rather go through the rigmarole of getting a refund, they have credited my account which means if I stay with my normal spend pattern, I won’t need to pay my bill for 4 months. Thanks Optus. Good result and pleased to see you saw reason AND common sense.
What you failed to take into account, Colin, is that Optus is evil and all its employees are servants of Satan. That’s why it’s acceptable to lose your rag with telephone support people – they willingly joined the company so they are responsible for its ill-doings. The Nurenberg trials taught us that. Of course, that’s not to say any other telecoms firm is any better, but Binjamin Netenyahu will be signing up with the PLA before I sign up with Optus again.
Hey Nick. Nice to hear from you and congratulations on your new role. You’ve piqued my interest with what Optus did to you to elicit such a strong reprisal from yourself – here I am thinking you were an even tempered sort of bloke! Say Hi to the lovely Miss Sarah for us.
Colin, I googled “optus is evil” and this page ranked only 4th. The moral of the story: Optus customers CANNOT win. I have a suggestion: Do as i did and cross to the other side… I cancelled all of my optus accounts and waddled proudly into the first phone shop i saw. I signed up with them and have never looked back. Ok ok it’s only been 2 weeks but the feeling is, and this i can only imagine, akin to being born again. I smell flowers, smile at strangers and even feel positive towards my phone again. Do it!
Ed, thanks for your comment – I’ve been with Optus since 1995. That’s a REALLY long time, by anyones stretch and up until the above debacle, they had generally been very good. However what WILL make me move is the first vendor who puts the new Palm Pre phone onto the market on a decent 3G plan. That will make me change faster than you can say “Optus is Evil”.
By the way, I’m pretty chuffed with a page rank of 4 – can’t complain about that!
Today whilst surfing the net I came across a web page that ask me to answer a few questions to be eligible for a free ticket from Qantas. And so I did answer the question and was asked to click continue which I did and was asked to type in my mob number which I did and then told to click on continue which I did and up came the terms and conditions which look rather similar as one of those scams. I immediately deleted the page but was immediately surprised by a call by the Premtxt company. I ignored it and was called again. I cancelled the call. At no time did I click to submit the form. My previous experience ended with me being charged many calls in the month and only realised that had happen after I recieived the bill from the mob provider.
I write to ask OPTUS to ensure that that will not happen to me again. My mobile number is 0413539781. A reply from you will be appreciated
Tam,
I think you need to go to http://www.optus.com.au and lodge your complaint there. I’m just some random guy whose writing a blog post airing my thoughts – and I certainly don’t work for Optus, nor have in the past. Sorry I can’t help you out.
Cheers!
CY