Communicating service

I am an idiot. I use Telstra as my service provider for my landline phone, mobile phone, internet services and Foxtel. I should have my head examined.

I dread any occasion that I have to contact them about one of these services. Every call goes through automated 'gateways' to an operator who can be anywhere around the country. Bad luck if that operator cannot resolve my query because all follow up falls back to the customer. Telstra doesn't appoint a case officer to sort out the problem, nor does it initiate any calls to the customer or provide the customer with a direct number to pursue the follow up. Every follow up starts the enquiry anew.

My latest enquiry is why changes to my Foxtel service which should have occurred automatically last month have not proceeded. It has taken three calls this week (each one handled from the start as a new enquiry) to establish that the impediment is that Telstra, which has my address registered separately for each of those services, has my apartment number missing from one of those registrations.

Can you believe that this requires internal Telstra referral to its IT Department and an unspecified number of days for the missing apartment number to be added to that one registration? What's more I have to ring them in a few days time to check that the address has been re-registered and when it has to then request the automatic Foxtel change.

Only days ago, Telstra announced the appointment of one Robert Nason to head a new "Customer Satisfaction, Simplification and Productivity Unit" and improve Telstra's customer service. I've written to him today with my complaint and I suggest any readers with their own Telstra problems do the same.