Bloody Telstra Issues

Oh my goodness - how long has it been?  Well I kind of have a good excuse.  Do you want to hear it?  No, it's not the of the common dog ate my homework garden variety. Here it is anyways.... 

My internet connection went down, down, down a couple of weeks ago.  I was pretty pissed I can inform you.  Especially because on the morning it disappeared, at the top of my street, there was a Telstra van and a man up to his elbows fiddling about in a manhole.  I had the kids in the car and I was running late for school, otherwise I would have stopped, rolled down my window and yelled, "Hey, what are you doing... am I going to have my internet when I get home?" 

When I got home, of course, I had NO internet - arhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!  I had to go out again, but when I returned, my husband asked me if I saw the Telstra man at the front of our house fumbling about in the manhole? Geez louise... no, but if I had of I would have been out there and asking the f**ker where my internet was! 

Thus after reporting my lack of internet to my IP and running through all the stupid checks they make you do of your own equipment, they agreed that it was probably the Telstra man who had caused the issue.  BUT -  just in case, they needed to send out one of their own technicians to review, otherwise I could be billed by Telstra if they came out and found the complication was my fault (for causing a nuisance I presume).  The problem with this is they can not give you a specific appointment time or even narrow it down to morning or afternoon - the best you can get is that they will be there on a specific day between eight and four - however they can give you a "courtesy" call half and hour before they will be in attendance!  This is all well and good if you are not in the middle of a swimming lesson or further than half an hour from home... therefore my time without internet dragged on another couple of days until I could be at my service providers beck and call!

Oh and would you believe it... they found the broadband service to my house fell short about 600 metres, which is about where I saw the naughty Telstra man with his grubby little hands in the manhole on the way to school. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr bloody grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! 

The next step was my IP logging a fault with Telstra and that is where a lot of time was eaten up, waiting for Telstra to get off their bums and fix the problem.  Of course because I am not a Telstra customer they are in no hurry to do anything! 

While I was waiting, not so patiently, I telephoned my IP to check on Telstra's progress.  I had a nice chat and discovered that some rogue Telstra technicians, do not check to see if a line is unused before assigning it a new home.  There is one MAJOR failing with this, besides being lazy and ignorant... broadband does not have a dial tone and sounds like an unused line and this explains why at least once or twice a year my internet connection goes missing in action! 

I should bill Telstra for the nuisance they have caused me.  What I do know is next time I see a Telstra technician working in my area I will be stopping, questioning him and getting his name! Far out.... and now that I have written this saga down I will definitely be phoning the Ombudsman for advice before approaching Telstra regarding this whole cock-up.