Formerly known as Telecom, Telstra are the largest
telecommunications company in Australia. Some people accuse them of being a
monopoly, but Telstra arent quite there yet. Aswell as a
telephone line, telstra can provide you with
cable tv (thanks to a deal they have with
foxtel) and
high-speed internet.
Telstra are well known for the way they treat their customers. They are forever overcharging them, and in one case, their arrogance was responsible for a death of a young child.
A family from a remote area of North-Eastern Victoria were told by Telstra that their phone could not be repaired because the company could simply not afford to pay the overtime. The family had been pleading for weeks and were always disappointed by Telstra's excuses. However one day, a few hours after another attempt to change the company's mind, the family's 10-year-old son suffered a severe asthma attack. Without a phone, the family were unable to ring for emergency assistance, so the young boy's father ran to the nearest neighbour in a desperate attempt to call for help. During this time the partly blind mother did everything she could to help her son. Yet sadly the boy had died in his mother's arms before his father had returned.
Another Telstra broadband customer was sent a monthy bill for over AU$800,000. Obviously a computer glitch, because that amounts to 7 terabytes of data and would take 3.5 years of heavy downloading to acquire a bill that expensive. And thats assuming the broadband connection maintained a decent speed and the network didn't go down once over this period of time. The bill was also an overdue notice, but the customer had never recieved the original bill beforehand.