I knew it!

My extremely low expectations of Telstra efficiency -- born of experience -- were justified. Can Telstra get anything right first go? Their offensive and incompetent accounts management continues. After all my run-ins with them, I was sure that I had navigated correctly through their regulations. I FIRST got my prepaid "plan" changed to a "longlife" one and I THEN put another $30 into the account. That should have given me 12 months (until January 2009) to use the money.

But when I checked the accounts-checking line (1258888) I found that I had been given only until March to use the money! So I rang their helpline straight away and was told not to worry. The date would come right in about "48 hours". It didn't. I put the money in on 19th and by today -- 23rd -- the account was still showing on 1258888 as due to cut out in March this year.

So I rang the helpline yet again. Rather to my surprise I got a prompt response. I was prepared for the usual 20 minutes wait before I got to actually talk to someone. So perhaps my nagging about their slow response time did hit a nerve somewhere and they have actually put on adequate helpline staff at long last.

Anyway, the line was atrocious. Once again we have a phone company that cannot keep its own in-house phone lines working well. Amazing! But I guess that my call had to go all the way to India and back so maybe that was a factor. As it was, I could understand only about every second word spoken.

Anyway, with much palaver he did succeed in altering the date to what it should AUTOMATICALLY have been set to. I wonder when the penny will drop at Telstra HQ that doing things manually that should be done automatically is inefficient and costly? Not to mention very irritating to their customers.