#70 – October 1, 2021

Hello!

On my walk today I completely ruined my stats for the first kilometre by stoping to approach Gandalf here. At least I’m calling this cat Gandalf because I was getting serious “You shall not pass” vibes. 

The astute amongst you (or at least those who read the photo information box I supply with every photo) will notice that this was not taken with my new phone. The upgrade paperwork is all done, I just have to wait for the phone to be sent to me.

Oh, Telstra.

I truly stand up to the masses and defend you whenever I can and am happy to be one of your customers as you have the best mobile network in my country. But I just wish that sometimes, sometimes, your service was a little better both in the business and personal realms.

Let’s go business first as this is a favourite tale of mine. In 2004, when I was 2IC of an IT division (of 2) we had to deal with Telstra on a regular basis. In this case, we were setting up an internet connection at the home of one of our managers and for some reason, this was a difficult task. The installation occurred, but for some unknown reason (to us and to Telstra) the line would not activate. I was at the manager’s house working through the issue when the Telstra Engineer on my mobile told me, “I’m sorry, sir, but there is nothing further we can do. There is something wrong with the cables between the house and the exchange. If this is an urgent service, we suggest you try another provider”.

Whilst I was being told this, my manager’s phone rang “Hi, this is Greg from Telstra new installations”, yes, I even remember his name to this day, “Your new connection is installed, tested and ready to go! Thanks for using Telstra as your provider!”. Needless to say, we got both their contact information and had a delightful conversation with our account manager that saw the company receiving us some rather impressive apologies and discounts.

Now, onto yesterday (Thursday). I was chatting with the Telstra rep online regarding my phone upgrade to the iPhone 13 Pro Max, we did as much as we could online and they told me to head straight to my local store (here’s a list) and complete the handover process. Being generally an obedient person, I organised to meet my wife there only to find that appointments are required. Appointments that can not be made over the phone whilst standing in front of the store and must be completed online. Long story short, my appointment is now for tomorrow (Friday) and instead of a new phone, we left the shopping centre with a dozen doughnuts and coffee. Not ideal, but not a complete waste of time.

Oh, Telstra. You make it hard to defend your company sometimes.

The wait for the new camera, I mean phone, continues.

That’s it for now. Talk to you soon. Stay safe.

Richard

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