Instead the telco has blamed storms in the Illawarra over the New Year period for delays in fault repairs in this region. 

“We are working harder than ever to continually improve our levels of customer service,” a company spokesman said.

“We don’t always get it right but we do take responsibility when we don’t provide the level of service our customers deserve and expect.”

But in the next sentence, responsibility was passed on to the clouds in the sky.

“The severe storms in the Illawarra region over the past six weeks have been the major cause of delays to some connection and repair times and we have brought extra technicians in to the area to assist customers,” the spokesman said.

Pressed on this, the Telstra spokesman said the impact of storms was a “general explanation”, rather than being a specific reason causing fault delays for certain people in the Illawarra.

“At no stage did we attribute storm activity to the individual cases you raised with us,” he said.

The “extra technicians” have been of little help to Woonona’s Leeona Harrison, whose phone was disconnected by mistake on December 19, after Telstra billing errors.

They said they had spoken to 20 people at Telstra trying to get it fixed. There was no mention of storms.

Telstra has cut about 1000 jobs in the past few years, including more than 400 late last year, as it pursued automation and offshoring. The Sensis call centre in Wollongong was closed in 2014.

In happy news, Telstra said Wollongong pensioner Val Silk, 74, finally had her phone connected – after the Mercury publicised her case.

Ms Silk had waited two months, including six whole days spent at home waiting for a technician who did not keep appointments, for a phone connection. During this time she suffered an asthma attach and couldn’t call for help. Her daughter popped in to visit by chance and took her to hospital.

Telstra apologised to each of these customers for the tardy service but at the time made no mention of storms.