How fucking painful is changing adresses for phones

[Southy]

This is the most painful thing I have ever fucking done, three different departments of useless fucking cockheads who don't seem to be able to help me in any way, useless sacks of hell crap...share your experiences peoples

 

[Shadow298]

Telstra I'm guessing?

they are pretty useless but just ask to talk to the complaints department and they will bend over backwards to help.

then talk to complaints and get your connection fees credited back to you for the fuck around.

 

[Southy]

Optus actually. last time we moved 7 years ago, it wasn't this fucking hard

 

[Goreripper]

Optus are hopeless. I got a new phone for Xena, but they sent the wrong one. When I rang them they said they'd ring back, but didn't. THree days later I called again and got the same promise, someone would call. Three days later, I rang again. Finally someone there had some intiative, and got a new phone sent out herself instead of waiting for a "supervisor".

 

[Southy]

I have have never had major issues with Optus before, hell gotta be 8 or 9 years ago I changed to them, because while they are hard to deal with, they are easier to deal with than Telstra, and with enough shit flinging I can get shit done in one MAYBE 2 phone calls. Hell I ended up getting all three Optus things changed over early this morning by telling them they are a pack of time wasting cunts making me call each dept independently, so got some tosser in Sydney who sorted it all.

 

[Lord Tim]

Quoted from our forum when I moved houses and phone lines a couple of years back:

I'm fuckin' back!

Now this could either go in What I Like, What Pisses Me Off, Post Whoring or Computers but instead I'll post it here!

As most of you guys know, we moved recently into a new house/studio. So in order to make things as smooth as possible with the internet and phone transfers, we called Optus a week or 2 before we moved and talked to a very friendly guy who arranged everything on the spot for us and even put Karyn's name on the account so she can look after stuff while I'm on tour or whatever. Perfect! Or so I thought.

Later that day, I notice our DSL is down. "No probs, probably just a temporary outage" thinks I. Several hours later and still no net, Karyn calls up only to be told that the net has been cut off and that's all they can tell her because she's not the account holder (this took several times to go through to the right department as their moronic voice recognition system actually didn't have the option to go to where we needed to go).

She calls me and I fucking explode with rage - this was right when we were starting to deal with Gamma Ray and we needed to get info back and forth to the promoters, etc. and also just as The Final Chapter was being sent to the labels. In other words, fucking important that I had the net on. So I call up Optus and complain only to be told they don't know if they can put our net back on and would like to offer us a dialup service as repayment.

!!! FUCK YOU CUNT, YOU FIX IT NOW! Sure enough, it was back on the next day. OK, good. Fuckers. All fixed then, right?

Wrong.

So we move. It was apparently 5 - 10 days for the line to be repartitioned and everything swapped over, etc. The phone was connected fine and we waited very impatiently for the ADSL to be put on.

In the meantime they gave us a dialup service that took at least 3 times to connect in the first place, and then if you got a stable connection that lasted more than 10 minutes, it was a damn good thing! The lines here are really quiet too, so it definitely wasn't a signal to noise ratio issue. And when we temporarily used Optus dialup at the other place, it did the same thing (but I did use a temporary Dodo prepaid card when we first moved in there and it was fine, so that would suggest Optus' dialup is basically shit). So yeah, it was either make up to 20 calls a day to get online or use my horribly expensive GPRS phone connection to quickly check the mail or do important stuff online (which I'm already dreading my mobile bill for).

Today, I got fed up waiting and got Karyn to call up to check on the bill while I was working here. She got lost in the automated menu thing yet again, then was told she didn't have account access again (until she insisted they look at the notes on the account and sure enough, there was 4 separate notes saying she indeed had access ).

We were told that the ADSL wasn't getting put back on because the order had be cancelled. What happened was when I insisted they connect my old ADSL back on after their fuck up, they cancelled the order for the new service. Aparrently if we indeed had an active phone line at the old place, the ADSL would still be quite happily working there (but without an active phone line, there's no ADSL is there, morons? )

WTF?!!! RAARRRRGGGHHH!! OK, so now what?

Optus: "it may be on in 7 days, maybe 10".

!!!!! WTF!?!!?!!?!!!!111!!!1one!!!1! "FUCK OFF! That's totally unacceptable!"

Optus: "Oh, we can give you complimentary dialup"

"It doesn't fucking work!"

Optus: "Oh. We can give you a month free"

"You fucking should - I've been without a working net connection for a month anyway! Push it through faster - I know it's possible to do"

Optus: "I talked to my supervisor and we can't do that"

.... "Fine. Disconect my account and close it. I've been a customer of yours for over 10 years and I'm walking away because you couldn't get your shit together."

Immediately after I signed up to Westnet for everything. My account was created on the spot and everything was changed over.

Within 3 hours of my first call to them, they had connected my ADSL up and here I am, back online. They said it may take 2 or 3 days... not a bad effort!

Clearly that was an impossible task according to Optus, so either Westnet have broken several of Newton's laws or Optus is just full of shit.

So yes, let me just sum this up in saying Optus can suck my dick and I whole-heartedly recommend Westnet.

Good to be back!

Still on Westnet, still not regretting fucking Optus right fucking off. Cocksuckers...

 

[Goreripper]

I will back -up Tim's rant about their vocie recognition system too. Now when I ring Optus, I just go "blah blah blah blah blah blah blah" until it connects with me with an operator. Dodo are idiots as well. Three months after I cancelled my website I had with them they were still charging me for it.

 

[salty]

I changed from Telstra ADSL to Westnet ADSL about a year ago or something and it was spectacular. They said I'd probably have a day downtime, but when they emailed to let me know that everything was done, I changed the username and password over in the modem control panel and it switched over instantly. I had exactly like, 45 seconds downtime while I disconnected and filled in the new details.

Absolute legends.

Plus now I get a total of something like 600% the bandwidth quota, which doesn't include uploads...which RULES.

 

[Lord Tim]

Does Telstra count uploads?

 

[Shadow298]

Does Telstra count uploads?

yep.

so you're massively fucked if you torrent and reseed what you take.

that's what used to kill my bandwidth so much.

 

[salty]

Yup exactly, me too.

 

[Priest of Evil]

Don't get me started with my current optus negotiations. HAH, how many hours of my life have the sucked away... no wonder i've got no time for forums and i still haven't come to an acceptable solution to my problem!

 

[Priest of Evil]

I changed from Telstra ADSL to Westnet ADSL about a year ago or something and it was spectacular. They said I'd probably have a day downtime, but when they emailed to let me know that everything was done, I changed the username and password over in the modem control panel and it switched over instantly. I had exactly like, 45 seconds downtime while I disconnected and filled in the new details.

Absolute legends.

Plus now I get a total of something like 600% the bandwidth quota, which doesn't include uploads...which RULES.

Can people please tell me about westnet. I had a look at their site and see they offer Broadband 1 & 2 & satelite. What have you guys chosen? Is there a major difference for a casual user like myself?

I'm currently being ripped off by optus with 6GB for $48 a month broadband and they want to jack my home phone up to about $50 also. The crap thing is my broadband is still contracted until July.

 

[Bucko]

yup its a pain the arse all right but we all seem to know that bwhahahha

 

[Priest of Evil]

btw I have checked out the different deals westnet offer with their plans but I was just hoping someone might be kind enough to fill me in with a little more detail. Or maybe you're all just off having a life on the weekend, lol. Forgive me if i'm shy to pick up a phone and call directly

 

[Lord Tim]

OK, unless you can't get broadband anywhere else, then satellite is the way to go. It's more expensive than regular broadband, not as fast, and crap for games because the ping time is terrible (think about it, you have to wait for the initial signal to bounce from a satellite to the ground - no drama with sustained transfers, but if someone has come up behind you with a BFG3000, you may not know about it for 90 seconds, which may put a dampener on your deathmatch ).

Broadband1 aka ADSL1 is speeds from 256k to 8000k. It's decent, cheap (well the lower speeds are) and pretty much everywhere. Not as fast as ADSL2 but you'll more than likely be able to get it.

Broadband2 aka ADSL2 / ADSL2+ is speeds from 1024k up to about 24,000k (theoretically). DAMN fast, especially if you have a good line and you're close to an exchange. If your exchange supports ADSL2, it'll work out to be around the same price of the faster speeds of ADSL1 and in some cases cheaper, and it's got the potential of being 3 times as fast, depending on your line in.

So I'd get them to tell you if your exchange supports Broadband2 and if so, get that. If not, Broadband1 is pretty much your only option. (Bear in mind that other providers may be ADSL2 enabled at that exchange so if you want that badly enough, you could find a provider who services your area, even if Westnet doesn't).

 

[Priest of Evil]

thanks Tim, thats most helpful