If a Telstra consultant offers you a "rollback", be very careful before agreeing. Even if they make it sound like the obvious thing to do.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
That's the advice from Woonona resident Leeona Harrison, whose family have had their phone and NBN internet disconnected since before Christmas. All after Telstra's mistake with a bill.
Ms Harrison is one of several Telstra customers who have contacted the Mercury after long periods offline.
After her mobile phone was stolen overseas last year, she signed up, on Telstra's advice, for a $69/month phone and NBN deal.
But the first bills were for more than $200, so she complained. When in December a Telstra case manager asked her if she wanted to “do a rollback", Ms Harrison assumed this would mean returning to the deal she actually had signed up for. So she agreed.
Two days later the phone and internet were dead. She called Telstra, the start of a long period of complaints, with no resolution.
"Hello, it's February, and we are still waiting for our internet and home phone to be connected," she said.
"I have [spoken to] about 20 different people to get this fixed. I have been into the Telstra shop, they looked into it, they said 48 hours. But nothing happens.”
Responsibility for the debacle was then sent down the chute into a department who cannot be contacted.
"The complaints guy says there is a problem with the activation service. Then they say it is with the 'NBN department'.
"The NBN department said it was in the IT department. I said 'what's their number?' I was told they're uncontactable. You can't ring them."
Telstra has supplied the Harrisons with an internet "dongle". Ms Harrison has spent $240 to recharge this, and wants it reimbursed.
A Telstra spokesman said “we wish to apologise to Mr and Mrs Harrison about the delays connecting their NBN service”.
“We have rebated their line rental fees for the period their service has not been working and applied a credit to their account to cover the cost of the mobile data they have been using while they wait for their fixed service to be restored.”