Breaking free of the Shackles

Some of you will know the trials and tribulations we have had with Telstra and getting a decent phone connection over a number of years… I think we have been pretty patient.  But at Christmas time when Telstra told us our phone line was fine (slugged us $120) for the privilege and gave us some crap about it must be our cordless phone causing the problem, I’d decided once and for all that we would get to the bottom of it and if I had to get someone else to do Telstra’s work for them that’s what I’d do no matter the cost.  

Dealing with Telstra was also sending me slightly nuts ... there standard answer was if you had your internet with us we could do something more... even though our phone line was crackly they just stuck a bandaid on it and as long as we had a dial tone they were ok with that.   

In December I drew a line in the sand and said I wasn't dealing with Telstra support any more and turned to my internet service provider look into it… yes it has taken a couple of months (but at least now it is fixed once and for all and what's a couple of months when our problems have been going on for years).  They trouble shooted everything from modem, to line noise etc found another problem with the line in the street but sent out a technician to the house to just make sure.   

The Technician was fantastic and wasn't leaving until we had a perfect crystal clean line.  He checked the connection to the house and the connection in the house and there was ever so slight a blip inside which he decided might be the cause so on one of those those stinking hot days we had in Adelaide a couple of weeks ago he went up into the roof to investigate.  I made sure he had plenty of ice water when he came down.  Turns out the phone line in the roof was a bit of a mess,  which he was able to fix.

After a weekend of super fast internet and going from 200+ drop outs a day to zero I applied for Naked ADSL so now we have a new phone number.

Today I took pleasure in being on hold for 15 minutes to Telstra to cancel my phone account.  For $10 more than I currently pay for internet I get $50 free calls a month and I never have to deal with Telstra international call centre again and navigate there stupid web site where you can never find the right number to call and even when you do you still get transferred to the wrong department (can't tell you how many times that.