Less than amazing

One of the island’s most popular attractions has spent the past two and a half years battling with Telstra over its internet service.

Geoff Moed from A Maze ‘N Things said it’s been “beyond frustrating” trying to organise a suitable internet connection for the business.

“We’re forever having internet and Telstra issues,” he said.

After initially being told NBN could be connected via the business’ second phone line, Telstra is now claiming the line is at a different address.

Geoff is unsure how the confusion arose.

“I’ve gone through the whole thing with numerous staff more than six times. They’ve sent me the NBN modem to install and a technician arrived on-site to connect it, but then said, ‘this is the wrong address’."

Despite A Maze ‘N Things operating the two lines for more than 25 years, Telstra is insisting the address for the second phone line is about 300 metres down the road from the attraction.

“The two lines definitely go to A Maze ‘N Things, at 1805 Phillip Island Road, but Telstra insist it’s at number 2115,” said Geoff.

“So we can’t get the NBN connected. It’s been a nightmare.”

Without the internet, the attraction cannot run EFTPOS payments or the office modem and computers.

Geoff installed an NBN satellite, with an ADSL line as a back-up if the satellite drops out.

But then he hit another Telstra problem.

“The problem is, we pay for the ADSL and they say you can get up to 20 mbps, whereas we’re lucky to get 1.2 mbps, and it often drops to 0.5 mbps.

“It’s about five per cent of what we potentially should get. If the satellite goes down, there’s just enough bandwidth to run the EFTPOS machines, but we can’t do any work on the internet”, he said.

And in the last few weeks, he said NBN actually disconnected the line leaving the business susceptible to loss of EFTPOS facilities and networks.

“So they not only wouldn’t correct their initial mistakes, but made it worse by disconnecting the line. The problem is that no one takes responsibility for their stuff-ups.

“They tell you they will fix it, and then nothing happens … and there are no repercussions.

“Even the threat of public exposure leads to half-hearted promises to fix the problem, and then nothing happens again. And no one is responsible!”

A solution in sight?

“We’ve been working with the customer to resolve these issues and have listened to their concerns,” a Telstra spokesperson said last week, after the Advertiser contacted them about the situation.

“We’ve spoken to NBN about correcting the addresses linked to the service numbers and we’ve transferred the service to the right address. Sometimes there can be issues with service number addresses in back end systems, which we’ve worked to resolve in this instance,” the spokesperson said.

“Now that the service number and address issues are being rectified, we’re speaking to the customer about NBN services for their account and we’re getting our technical teams to look into the ADSL line speed issue.”

The spokesperson said ADSL line speeds can be influenced by a number of factors including distance to the exchange.

“We know how frustrating it can be when our customers run into problems like this and we’re sorry it’s taken us time to resolve.”

However Geoff said the confusion over the address of his company’s second line still hadn’t been resolved.

In fact, all Telstra had done was contact him to confirm the main phone line was actually connected to the A Maze ‘N Thing address.

“It is laughable that the first number they quote is our main number and it hasn't (that I know of) been connected anywhere else in the last 29 years,” Geoff said.

“There were no problems with that number, but they are happy that they have confirmed that everything was OK! However, the phone number that has been the cause of their confusion, is "still waiting to be updated". It's over two years now and I am still waiting!”

Geoff said it appeared Telstra did disconnect the second phone line last week, which explains the internet problems plaguing the business.

He also brushed aside the claim that Telstra understood his frustration, saying all the company offered was “broken promises and hollow platitudes”.

“They don't really know how frustrating it is, because I bet they aren't losing sleep over it, and they still hadn't resolved it.

“We will be changing the signage out the front of the property to read "Telstra and NBN, Thank you for the Island's third-world service" in the hope that we can embarrass them into actually doing what they should be doing as a bare minimum of customer service.”