Day 57: Telstra - Australian For Clueless

So after 2 days without it, the Internet came back after a visit by a Telstra technician this morning... But wait, didn't Telstra tell me that they don't have technicians that work on weekends? Didn't they give a 'commitment date' of 7pm on Monday for return to service after promising lunchtime Saturday didn't work out for them? Do they have any, and I mean ANY idea of what they're talking about at the Telstra tech support line??

At least we're back online. I hope I don't have to speak to Teltra again in a hurry, my experience to date with them has made it hard for me to believe anything that I'd be likely to hear from them.

If I didn't know my 10 year old reads this blog from time to time and also that my mum and inlaws read as well I'd probably offer up my thoughts on how I really feel about the service from Telstra in some more colourful language. I think it has been my very first rant post, I'll try to keep these to a minimum.

Day 56: Pigs Might Fly

We took Jenna and Henry to the Canberra Show today with Belinda's parents also in tow. It was hot, busy, dusty, smelly, exhausting and it was also hot. Despite the heat, the 90,000 people, the dust, the odour and the exhaustion we all had a really good time. Even sitting in the searing sun waiting for the racing pigs to be over so we could see the diving pigs was fun... well at least for henry who was happily stealing what was left of Belinda's Mango Ice Cream.

The Piggy show was pretty cool, but Henry enjoyed the animal nursery the most. I was impressed that he recognised all the animals in the flesh after having only ever seen pictures of them in his story books. He was yelling out 'Moo Moo' and 'Baa Baa' and 'Neigh Neigh' at all the right animals and then we found the Llama. It stumped him a bit, he couldn't decide if it was a 'Neigh Neigh' or a 'Baa Baa'.

Jenna also had fun playing the carny sideshows, driving the dodgem car, going on the roller coaster and of course, buying her showbag. I couldn't help myself in the showbag pavilion and ended up walking out of there with 5 showbags... 1 for Jenna, 1 for Henry, 1 for Belinda, 1 for me and one for Jenna and I to share (I wanted the ripstick and Jenna got all the lollies). A good day had by all.

We got home at around 5pm thinking that the internet should be back on since it was well after the lunchtime deadline. Well, 'Pigs Might Fly' pretty much sums how that panned out.

I spent another 40 minutes on the phone to Telstra before I spoke to a person who told me their 'commitment time' for return to service was by 7pm on Monday night. I enquired as to why I was told service would be returned by lunchtime today on my last phone call to them and was told 'oh no, we don't have technicians to work on the weekend' and 'I don't know why you were given the wrong information'.

Not impressed with Telstra.

Day 55: I'll Just Call Telstra, It Won't Take Long...

Jenna was horrified to find that the Internet was broken when we got home tonight. We hadn't noticed until she alerted us to the dire situation and after resetting the modem with no improvement I thought I'd give Telstra a quick call to see if there was an issue in our area.

It took about 10 minutes of talking to a robot before being put through to a real person... who then promptly told me they had to transfer me to the Mac support team and put me on hold. Hold lasted 40 minutes and a glass of wine.

When I finally spoke to another human, and I use the term human loosely, I had to reset the modem a number of times and then log out and log back in with a new password all of which did nothing to help with connection to our Bigpond Service.

I was then told there must be a problem at the exchange, given a case number and told that the service would be returned by lunch time tomorrow. I was also to call back quoting the case number if it hadn't returned by the lunchtime deadline.

So after being on the phone for over an hour and only spending about 10 minutes actually speaking to a human I'm still without access to our Bigpond 'Service'.

I'm really glad I bought an Optus SIM for my iPad :)