A telephone technician assigned by Biggin and Scott had come over and fix the phone line. He’s a friendly guy who is good enough to fix the telephone line, compared those bunch of lazy-ass Telstra techy’s who’d came over and charged us $99 for finding out that it is actually not their fault. Having charged that amount of money, they wouldn’t even care to fix the problem and left with a dismantled plug box on the floor, claiming that it’s faulty and there’s no point putting it back. Customer Service is way down to hell in that particular department of Telstra’s.

Telstra left the box on the floor, just like that, and left.

After about 2 weeks, which is last Thursday, the Biggin and Scott’s contract telephone boy came and fixed the line in less than a hustle. He brought over some gadgets of trade - oscillators, signal detectors, etc. No materials were consumed during the fix. So no cost were incurred. He’s kind enough to give me a telephone cable of about 6 meters, FREE!

Below is the summary of the cost incurred throughout the line fixing process:

Cost of Repair on our side by Scott & Biggin’s Telephone Technician: $0.00
Cost of Finding out that the telephone line is crippled but it’s NOT Telstra’s fault by a Telstra technician: $99.00
Cost of Rental during the Month where the line isn’t functional: $18.50
____________________________
Total Cost Incurred: $117.50

Not to mention some intangible losses, which includes time as well as mental stress dealing with the whole problem against the selfish lardlord. But at the end of the day, we’ve finally got our line back working. Anyway, I’ve applied for ADSL and it’s in the process. Probably 3-4 more days before I can actually use it.

Ratings for Telstra’s Customer Service (Technical): [rate 0.5]

Final thoughts:
They’re kind enough to come and check whether it’s the line’s problem, kind enough to tell you that it’s actually not their problem, kind enough to charge $99.00 for finding out that it’s not their fault - $99 for the fuel they’ve consumed being here and the prescious time they’ve used to find out that the line is actually faulty and it’s not their fault…BUT THEY DON’T EVEN CARE TO PUT IT BACK TO WORK!