[TelstraClear] My TelstraClear nightmare

Forums › One New Zealand (including Vodafone, WxC, Farmside) › [TelstraClear] My TelstraClear nightmare

alialiali

4 posts

Wannabe Geek

#71365 9-Nov-2010 14:40

I arrived in NZ just over a month ago from UK. Ordered internet from TelstraClear around 3 weeks ago. I did it all over web and am NZ citizen with good credit history. Didn't hear from them for a while since the order, only from credit check company. All okay though, then spent 15mins on phone to an idiot after a week, trying to find out if anything was happening. He said I'd get contacted by installation team shortly. I wasn't. Rung again a week later, spent 15mins navigating their call centre.... to be told they'd lost my order. So I complained through the web. heard back from complaints team on Monday, who tried to rearrange installation date from WED to TUES morn. Housemate stays home from work. There's a no show. Spend another 15mins navigating call centre, to be told an engineer hadn't even been assigned the job. I'm (by this point) demanding installation this afternoon. Then called back later to say it won't happen due to engineer having an accident on a job this morning. I asked if they had other engineers in the Wellington area. I'm told no.

From the start, this has been an absolute nightmare. I would strongly advise people away from telstraClear and as I have lots of friends who're returning migrants or one-year Visa visitors, I shall say it's not worth wasting a month of their valuable time here waiting for some totally incompetent Telecommunications company to sort their stuff.

Absolutely appalling.

Has anybody ever had an instance of good service from them? Or good communication? I have some American friends who ordered it as well, and had much the same experience.

langi27

675 posts

Ultimate Geek

#402123 9-Nov-2010 14:48

Most of us TC customers feel your pain on this.

Telstraclear have a terrible customer service record, the problem is they offer some of the best and fastest and cheapest packages. (cable not DSL).

They keep sacking their internal technical staff and NZ based helpdesk/customer service people and rely on outsourced companies to pick up the slack.

Just have a look through other threads on how bad TC really are.

The problem is that when it works it works well and you get good value for money. You either put up with the pain or jump ship to someone else.

alialiali

4 posts

Wannabe Geek

#402131 9-Nov-2010 14:57

That's sorta reassuring.

I dread to think how many complaints they get. It's the sort of ropey service of a really badly run newly-formed company, one that can't match the demand. And yet, as you say - they've a complete monopoly on cable internet in NZ.

A sad state of affairs. I'm sure once another company starts offering similar things they'll lose a lot of custom. I hope so.

For fun, i'd really like to suggest their management tries ringing their own call centre as if they were a customer...... they'd soon learn how infuriating it is.

muppet

2570 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#402139 9-Nov-2010 15:08

They are beyond hopeless, yes.
If you contact them via Twitter, you can get a real person who might be able to help.
Otherwise it's all just outsourced muppetry and they really don't care.

Audiophiles are such twits! They buy such pointless stuff: Gold plated cables, $2000 power cords. Idiots.

OOOHHHH HYPERFIBRE!

Behodar

10506 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#402144 9-Nov-2010 15:15

A few months ago I had an issue where my connection was cancelled in error and it took more than a month for TCL to get it running again. So yes, I feel your pain!

Edit: And then they had the cheek to say "vote for us for Best ISP". I voted for Telecom instead...

timmmay

20580 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#402152 9-Nov-2010 15:28

TelstraClear has abysmal service these days. Once it's all set up it's good value though, and the internet performance is great. I'm finding that there's more downtime than there used to be though.

quickymart

13950 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

#402313 9-Nov-2010 20:05

This thread is awesome, they were just as bad in 2005 (when I finally left working there).

tombrownzz

147 posts

Master Geek
Inactive user

#402317 9-Nov-2010 20:14

1)Why did you choose to go with telstra clear in the first place? Friend recommened it to you?

2)Were you getting cable or dsl installed?

3)Have you got it installed yet? Did your American friends get it installed yet?

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scensation

63 posts

Master Geek

#402411 9-Nov-2010 23:08

I have received mixed services from TCL.

When I signed up they gave me the wrong order number. When they finally located the correct one, they thought I was located in Wellington, even though I am not. Clearly someone had entered my order and other details incorrectly. Or, there has been some sort of mix up.

When that matter finally resolved and when I was arranging time for the technician at about 7pm, they managed to find someone to come over at 9:30am the next day, instead of the usual 24 to 72 hour wait. Excellent! The contractor arrived on time, too. Good stuff.

Sadly things went down hill from there. My connection has been dropping regularly. Without fail, every 4 weeks or so I would have a major outage for at least 3-4 hours. About 25 minutes ago it failed again but for only about 5 minutes.

Usage meter is perpetually unreliable. This topic has been discussed Ad nauseam on the forum.

My complaint about being metered for visiting their unmetered sites wasn't resolved satisfactorily either. TCL's suggested that I hire an IT expert. They recommended Geek on Wheels, with whom they have a good business relationship and would be able to give me a good deal. I fail to see why I should pay someone-else when, in my view and supported by evidence, that my traffic to TCL's unmetered sites, were indeed metered; software updates, p2p and wireless traffic hijack were all ruled out as potential causes.

I am staying with TCL because my rental property connects to TCL cable. Any changes to Telecom, Snap, or other operators will incur a significant set up cost.

In all fairness, TCL?s cable does represent good value for money. I am also grateful for the increased quota and speed, which started on 1 October. However, I still would not recommend TCL.

timmmay

20580 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#402465 10-Nov-2010 08:01

Just to show it's not all bad my connection was handled perfectly in 2006, technicians turned up on time, did the install well, and I was happy. I started getting small patches of downtime this year too though.

angusdog

20 posts

Geek

#402758 10-Nov-2010 12:18

I'm guessing as per human nature that you're mainly going to hear form people who aren't satisfied. However, we've had good, but not great, service form TC over the 10 years we've been connected. Their tech staff aren't fabulous (T-Box does have audio over HDMI, despite what the technician said) but quite happy with their service.

There are teething troubles with the T-box (sluggish response to the remote) which have cleared up and it works well.

The only problem I have is we'd said to ourselves that we wouldn't pay $700 for the T-box service, so ordered an Apple TV, only to have a call from TC with the correct pricing. So now we have a T-box, Apple TV, Air Video server for iPods and iPad - we now have too much media floating around the house...

tritex

189 posts

Master Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

#403882 12-Nov-2010 13:34

The hardest telecommunications company i have ever done business with, if you make a big deal (send multiple emails call the call centre several times a day etc) you get things done with goodwill refunds etc so not totally bad, but it takes time, time it doesn't need to take. The incompetence of the contact centre staff (paticulary the new outsourced people you get that sound suspiciously like Telecoms prepaid call centre in Indonesia) simply doesn't help the situation.