Telstra

Ms REDMOND (Heysen) (15:27): After all those lovely positive speeches, I am afraid I am rising to do a genuine grievance about my recent adventures with Telstra. I have a history going a long way back with Telstra. Way back when I set up my legal practice in Stirling, I was going to move into premises being vacated by a local accountant who was a good friend. We each made inquiries. One of us inquired about what it would cost to get a new telephone service put on and the other inquired about what it would cost to transfer the existing Commander two-line automatic to the new occupant.

When we did that, it turned out that it was only going to cost $1,500 to put a new service in, requiring the removal of the old service and putting the new one in, but $3,500 to change the name on the address and just keep the service exactly as it was. I thought that did not make much sense, so I rang them to see if we could do something more sensible. But, no, we could not. That was the point at which I should have stopped using Telstra altogether.

However, I have had a couple of trips overseas, not many, but I have yet to get a phone to work for me through Telstra while I am overseas. On one occasion when I went overseas, I was the shadow attorney at the time. I had bookings all week in London to do various things with the various people involved in crime reduction. I had all these appointments made before I left. I went over there, having made the arrangements at the Telstra shop that I would have a phone that worked, yet nothing could make the phone work.

When I came home, some investigation disclosed—and for this I got a written apology from David Thodey, the then CEO—that Telstra had received the payment that it always got month upon month from Treasury and Finance for my account and, having received it while I was overseas, they paid it to someone else and cut off my phone with no notice, so I had no phone while I was overseas. More recently, I went overseas and discovered that the phone still would not work.

I thought I had made all the arrangements. I had been to a Telstra shop and had done everything I could think of to get the phone so that it would work. I went overseas and could not get the phone to work. When I came home, upon inquiry they said, 'Oh, your phone was locked.' I had taken it to a Telstra shop specifically. I am not a technological person, so I had written down very carefully everything I had to do, but nothing I had to do could unlock the phone.

So this time, when I went to the CPA conference last month, I thought, 'You beauty. I am going to handle this.' I went to the Norwood Telstra shop. First of all, I got a fairly disinterested young lady. She clearly would have been more interested if I had been a six-pack guy, but she was not interested in old ladies.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Older ladies.

Ms REDMOND: Older ladies—I am older than you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: There is no such thing as an old lady.

Ms REDMOND: She was not terribly interested and she just gave me a quick flick verbally to say, 'Just do this.' I said, 'The last time I went, my phone was locked.' She said, 'Yes, it might be locked', so she then handed me over to another person, who said they could unlock it. Yes, it had been locked and now they were able to unlock it.

'Terrific, what else do I have to do?' He said, 'What you can do is purchase international day roaming.' I took the little brochure that was given to me, a little printout, for an international day pass and I read about it. I went home and rang the number that was advised and spoke to a very nice young man in the Philippines. I do not often expect to get very good service from people in the Philippines, but a young man named Alyne Yoon gave me his employee number and, indeed, sent me a confirming email about the arrangements, so there I was thinking I was set. When I got to my first port of call, which was in Canada, I had the joy of a text from Telstra saying:

Welcome to Canada. As this is an eligible day pass destination, if you use your mobile you will be charged $10 a day for your day pass. This includes unlimited standard calls, here and to any other country, plus 100 MB of data to use a day. For more details go to this…

and so on. I tried to make a phone call back to the office, but it said, 'No, sorry, international roaming is not available from this service. Your account is currently suspended.' Then of course I tried to ring because it said, 'For more information, please contact us on +61,' and the number. I rang that number, but of course it said to me, 'No, you can't make an international phone call on this phone. It doesn't work.'

I checked all the data settings I had written down, as per the long conversation with young Alyne from the Philippines, and then two days later they called me. First of all, they rang me but then told me, having rung me, that no-one was available to speak to me. They had made the phone call. No-one was available to speak to me, but they would call back five minutes later. They called back five minutes later only to advise that they would hang up because they had not assisted me. I tried again, of course, to make another international call, but again I had the response, 'Sorry, international calls are not available from this number.'

Everywhere I went I was receiving another mobile text message. I did get some text messages. I had one from Mike Smithson, while I was away. I had one successful phone call, an incoming phone call on my first night in Vancouver, from a young man in Perth from a Telstra call centre to find out whether I was happy with the package I was currently on with Telstra. I explained where I was and that he had woken me after I had finally got to sleep after a 27-hour journey, but we had a very pleasant and quite lengthy chat.

He would have been unaware at that stage because I had not had the chance to make any phone calls. Of course, when I did, I never ever had a successful phone call in spite of every arrangement I had made throughout my journey with them. I had written down everything I had to do. I had written it down on a hard copy. I had written it down in the phone. I had tried every available option to try to get assistance, but to no avail. I thank the house for its indulgence in allowing me to at least vent on this particular issue.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Unlike the rest of us, you are continuing to try to do that. We all buy international phones with international SIM cards and have international numbers.