Hello everybody! I am mightily relieved to be back online in the cyberspace universe. Mid morning Friday (two days ago), we lost all mobile, internet and Eftpos services in Beverley. With absolutely no warning. A few of us apparently received notification of an "upgrade" affecting Northam at the end of October. Northam is 68 kilometres north of us...
Anyway, we waited and waited and waited on Friday for our telecommunications to be restored....Around 3pm, I walked up to the Shire and asked them to send a complaint to our local member, Ms. Mia Davies' office. As the sun went down, pandemonium reigned at the pubs. Who carries cash anymore?
We are continually advised to use the mobile and internet services. Which is great if that service is reliable. Except we do not have that certainty here in Beverley. We lose mobile signal on the edge of town, and if travelling to the Big Smoke, we do not get coverage again for 60 kilometres.
This situation is outrageous and all Telstra does, if I complain loudly enough, is to hand out credits. Amusingly, they sent my last credit to a deactivated card. If the Refunds division of Telstra had spoken to the Direct Debits section of Telstra, our new card details were available.
A Telstra phone booster (costing $1000) failed here. The customer was offered half the amount as a refund for their unit's non- functionality .In our Gallery, the NBN (National Broadband Network) was useless and we turned the system off after the signal continually dropped out. We would quite like to use Skype to talk to our granddaughter, but we have no guarantee the the signal would sustain a conversation.
We are not in a 3rd world country. We are a reasonably sized regional town a day trip from the Big Smoke. My boy, Alex and my beloved Michael both suffer from chronic health conditions. I need reliable and consistent mobile and internet service.
Here is a copy of the letter I have just sent to Ms. Vicki Brady, who is now CEO of Telstra. Her details are available on LinkedIn.
And aren't we lucky that every Thursday is apparently Telstra Day!
Good afternoon Ms. Brady.
my name is Kate Sofoulis, and I live with my husband Michael in Beverley, which is 130 kilometres east of Perth. Beverley has a population of about 1000 in town and another 700 in the shire. We run an art gallery supporting local and emerging artists on Beverley's main street, Vincent Street. We are Telstra customers, having two mobiles (a Samsung S20 and an iPhone 13Pro), and a plan to cover our phones and laptop data and two Netgear hotspots . The NBN did not work in our situation and as we are pensioners, we can't afford the luxury of a landline. Two days ago, Beverley lost all mobile, internet and Eftpos services. There were no warning notifications to residents and business owners. As we are a tourism town, this outage, on a weekend with several events, has been very disruptive. We have lost sales in the Gallery and our local pubs have experienced extreme financial hardship, being unable to use their Eftpos terminals or receive bookings. Our community markets and live concert were also affected by the loss of telecommunications. Beverley is not remote and we are barely regional. Yet we suffer from appalling service from Telstra - not enough signal in our tower, slow internet, mobiles dropping out in town centre. We had a previous outage earlier this year affecting mobile services. Telstra only notified Beverley of an issue with the tower when our local member was inundated with complaints. Personally, we have received less than optimal service. These issues include - 1. failing to close one account after opening a second account for Michael's iPhone 2. sending a refund to a debit card that had been deactivated when Telstra had details of our new card 3. using language that could have been considered aggressive after a direct debit failure. I have a 31 year old son with Autism and serious health conditions who lives in Perth. It is vital he can contact me at any time as I have his entire medical history in my head. My husband has chronic lung conditions, reflux, arthritis and PTSD. He has just had a hip replacement. We rely on reliable mobile and internet services. When will Telstra cease to treat Beverley as second class citizens?
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