Broadband update 3: The end in sight?
Thursday, February 03, 2005
I’ll believe it when I see it. The Telstra techs have until close of business tonight (which according to their clock is 7 pm, which must be nice for them) to figure out what’s wrong with the phone line and fix it. I’m not particularly optimistic that they will resolve the problem, whatever that may turn out to be. Rather, I suspect they will take one look, blame the ISP and refuse to do anything to correct our buggered phone lines. And charge us a hundred bucks for the callout.
In a sense, this will be good. I really don’t have time to play World of Warcraft much between now and next Wednesday, when I have to fly to Perth to provide training on a system I barely know myself yet. I have three working days and a weekend to become sufficiently expert to fake my way through two two-day training sessions without looking like a complete idiot or teaching someone something catastrophically wrong.
Meanwhile, Mike the Boss and Ian the Supervisor have recommended that I be paid as one grade higher than my current position, coz of all that responsibility I have now. It’s contingent, of course, on my applying as soon as possible for promotion to that level, which means knocking together a CV and addressing selection criteria and generally writing self-promoting garbage of the rankest order. All very tiresome and rote. Fortunately, I have no broadband, so I guess I have the time to spare…
Updated update: Well, shit. Just got a call from the Telstra technician who is very sad to report that ‘because of the bad weather and high winds, they are unable to complete that job’. It’s being reallocated to Sunday the 6th. That means the phone will have been out for ten fucking days, assuming they can even work out what the problem is by then. I mean, sure, I can see that the high winds and such have made life difficult, but I would like to point out for the record that the shithouse weather only started today…
Sigh. Looks like that application’s going to get written this weekend after all.
8 smartarse remarks Post a Comment
8 Comments:
Errr...much as I'm unaccustomed to the role of defending Tel$tra*, we did kinda call off the original 'please come and fix the phone' request while the weather was still pretty clement. Granted there was plenty of reason to do this (avoiding a $99 call out fee when we thought we'd figured out the problem, for one), it isn't completely Telstra's fault that they didn't send out someone before the weather turned to crap.
That said, it did seem to be a very long time between the original fault report and them not showing up before we called 'em off.
das iMonster
*Isn't it fun when big corporations have an 'S' in their name so you can be all radical and scathing and edgy by replacing said 'S' with '$'** and aren't they all quaking in their boots when they see that online and stuff and junk!!!
** I wonder if that works for Japanese companies and the Yen?
Let's see:
'$ON¥'
Oh yeah! Double threat!!!
By Anonymous, at 3:42 PM
Yeah, but they acknowledged in the phone call that there was a general fault in the area that was still alive while our specific fault was on hold - and they didn't fix that either.
Did I mention that when I was told they wouldn't be doing anything until Sunday, I lodged a complaint and they told me that someone from the Complaints Department would get back to me on *Monday* (ie after the fault will allegedly have been fixed).
Hi-larious...
Oh well, every bit of bad weather and high winds (otherwise known as a storm) has a silver lining. At least you get some work done and you don't have a chronic and lifethreatening illness that requires constant phone access. Come to think of it, if you did, you'd probably get better service. The bad publicity of your death due to inability to call for help would be something they'd prefer to avoid.
True. To give them their due, Telstra's fault line does have a recorded message along the lines of 'If you have a diagnosed life-threateneing illness' etc.
However, one gets the creepy impression that it took at least and probably more than one person dying within reach of a non-functional phone to inculcate that item of service.
Have that creepy feelin' no longer - now you can just be genuinely outraged:
http://www.abc.net.au/am/stories/s482088.htm
Da Simonster
By Anonymous, at 1:24 PM
Hmm, yes that does ring a bell, now that you point it out. And here was I thinking that nothing could elevate any further my contempt for Alston's gross incompetence.
Gosh. Goes to show you, doesn't it?
Take heart, you don't have to get the promotion, you just have to apply for it! This means you can be brutally honest with your self-promotional garbage. At least they haven't asked you to write the selection criteria for your new position first, a more than slightly dodgy duty that was given to me once...
Yeah, Fiona had to do the same when she went for her position upgrade. Needless to say, she did all right in that process...
