Telstra chaging everyone for line rental

[RedBull77]

Has anyone heard this, that even if your home phone isn't with telstra, and telstra owns that line, they are now going to start charging you line rental ontop of what your already paying for with another service provider? I just had some door knockers come round telling me this, however I'm using naked dsl they said it wont apply, but if I was to change and go back to using normal adsl2 and phone and I'm not with telstra they'll start billing me line rental? is this right? or just a scam to try and sell telstra products?

What are your thoughts?

[hakhawk]

so... they were from telstra? telling you that telstra will charge you, aswell as the other provider charging you, and theyre trying to get you to switch back to telstra?

[illusionalvr]

suprised it wasnt all ready there. sounds like they are trying to run a railway company

[jules]

hello sir please to listen i have important thing to tell you about the line rental you must be paying if you don't accept this very good offer

[RedBull77]

so... they were from telstra? telling you that telstra will charge you, aswell as the other provider charging you, and theyre trying to get you to switch back to telstra?

yea, well thats how it came across to me, but the thing is telstra is charging the other companys to use their lines, and now by the sound of are going to start charging everyday people who arn't with telstra for using their line as well, so they are double dipping,

[STEALTHY™]

yea, well thats how it came across to me, but the thing is telstra is charging the other companys to use their lines, and now by the sound of are going to start charging everyday people who arn't with telstra for using their line as well, so they are double dipping,

They have to make money somehow. The masses are finally onto them that they have a shit product, and that theres more than just that one provider to go through.

GL to telstra getting a single red cent out of me.

[Vt-Brrrlina]

doubt very much telstra are gunna door knock anyone..... and most contracts with other companies, take optus for example take those things into budget when they sign u up hence u pay them for line rental and calls, not telstra...

[Shearer]

Just hearing the name Telstra is enough to make my blood boil

The TIO are very good at fixing Telstra problems, I'm speaking from personal experience too

[MagiTEK]

Double billing. Simple as that. If the lines are owned by telstra but you get them via 3rd party, then its a jip. The 3rd party already pay a hefty sum to rent them from telstra.

If they try to enforce it. take it to consumar affairs. They will have a field day. Im sure.

Reminds me of the american mobile phone system, where you get charged to send a message and the recipient gets charged to receive it. What a f'in rought.

[minux]

Double billing. Simple as that. If the lines are owned by telstra but you get them via 3rd party, then its a jip. The 3rd party already pay a hefty sum to rent them from telstra.

What a load of crap, 3rd parties pay **** all to rent telstras systems. The government has stupid laws in place to prevent telstra from really profiting (such as selling net prices cheaper than what they supply to other companies).

Good on telstra, I hope they do it. Might stick it up the governments who keep forcing them to provide services to companies cheaper than they can provide it for their own customers.

[STEALTHY™]

What a load of crap, 3rd parties pay **** all to rent telstras systems. The government has stupid laws in place to prevent telstra from really profiting (such as selling net prices cheaper than what they supply to other companies).

Good on telstra, I hope they do it. Might stick it up the governments who keep forcing them to provide services to companies cheaper than they can provide it for their own customers.

But telstra dont provide any services to their customers.

[minux]

But telstra dont provide any services to their customers.

Really? 3 mobile phones for last 8 years with them, 1 home phone service, never had an issue, always helpful. People take stories they hear from ACA and think that the same stories have happened to themselves.

Try using dodo or contact their customer service, same for optus. Useless.

[STEALTHY™]

Really? 3 mobile phones for last 8 years with them, 1 home phone service, never had an issue, always helpful. People take stories they hear from ACA and think that the same stories have happened to themselves.

Try using dodo or contact their customer service, same for optus. Useless.

Talking from personal experience. Optus and telstra are both as bad as eachother.

Most recently, reported a fault with telstra, they checked the line, and said it was fine, and then tried to charge me for the false call out. Then my provider hired an independent company to test the lines, and what do you know, they found the fault telstra couldn't find, and my provider made them fix it (and imagine that, the issues i was having are now solved). Just one of a few instances where telstra have tried to charge for something they shouldn't.

Not to mention my parents having superfast cable, and they could barely download a movie.

[ClairBear]

Ahhh Helstra where do I start?

Tried to stick me with a $2000 phone bill from a previous tenant years ago even after I provided a copy of my lease with dates proving otherwise. What a drawn out bun fight that was and I had no phone for weeks as they cut me off. Prior to that I had numerous issues with them over connection issues, faults, waiting for weeks for a technician to perform work, took them 3 months to connect a new phone line to a house I built - the list goes on.

Then I was given the option of other providers when Helstra no longer had the monopoly on telephone service. I reckon I was the first to jump ship.

If you shop around and compare prices Helstra and service they are not competitive. Only reason they have so many customers is previous generations who are still connected from an era when Helstra was the only provider and because of their branding in the market place. When you sit down with your parents and show them what they are paying and what they could be paying with another provider I am sure they will jump ship too. My father recently told Helstra to jam it up their botties when they added a charge to his mobile bill without permission. He rang and enquired and was told it was an add on internet package. As he said it's only $5 a month but how many people would query it and have it removed or cancel their service? Sneaky so and so's.

[minux]

If you shop around and compare prices Helstra and service they are not competitive. Only reason they have so many customers is previous generations who are still connected from an era when Helstra was the only provider and because of their branding in the market place. When you sit down with your parents and show them what they are paying and what they could be paying with another provider I am sure they will jump ship too. My father recently told Helstra to jam it up their botties when they added a charge to his mobile bill without permission. He rang and enquired and was told it was an add on internet package. As he said it's only $5 a month but how many people would query it and have it removed or cancel their service? Sneaky so and so's.

Of course they are not competitive, they are NOT allowed to be. They cannot provide a service cheaper than what a reseller does. How the hell is that fair business? I know a person who works in head office legal and some of the pathetic laws imposed on Telstra are a joke. If they were any other business they would be broke.

[STEALTHY™]

Of course they are not competitive, they are NOT allowed to be. They cannot provide a service cheaper than what a reseller does. How the hell is that fair business? I know a person who works in head office legal and some of the pathetic laws imposed on Telstra are a joke. If they were any other business they would be broke.

They dug their own grave. Once upon a time they could sell their product at whatever price they wanted, because there was no other option, now there is, and there slowly losing customers.

Also, i was going to say, telstra's only good point is mobile phones, but i bought a CDMA phone years ago for when i drove interstate. Broke down, neither telstra phone had range, and only my passengers vodafone had range. I'm sure i'm not the only oe who has had shit service from them.

[minux]

They dug their own grave. Once upon a time they could sell their product at whatever price they wanted, because there was no other option, now there is, and there slowly losing customers.
.

They dug their own grave? How is government forcing them to resell to providers to provide compeition their own grave?

[STEALTHY™]

They dug their own grave? How is government forcing them to resell to providers to provide compeition their own grave?

Its no different to any other field. One company can't have the whole market and sell at a huge profit. If they weren't so greedy, maybe the government wouldn't have had to step in. Profit and profiteering are 2 different things

[ClairBear]

For me it's not all about the price, I am always willing to pay more to get a good service. This is where Helstra fall over - bad service. I have too many negative experiences with this Company over the years to ever give them another cent of mine. I have family and friends who also experienced bad service including wrong advice, lying about package content and staff who have no idea about the products they are selling.

My father initially got bigpong against my advice some time ago and I set it up for him. Their stupid cd kept getting stuck at a certain point. The operator, when I was finally allowed to speak to him after him arguing with my father about talking to me as he was the account holder, admitted the cd had a known fault then was clearly clueless and talked in riddles attempting to set it up over the phone. I called him a moron and hung up. Blew away their retarded auto set up and did it myself in minutes. Imagine if my father didn't have me to help him! Since then Dad had a number of frustrations dealing with them over connection, email and mobile phone issues. The mobile phone billing incident in my OP was the final straw. He told them to stick the lot.

He remarked to me the other day that since moving to Node he hasn't had a drop out, slow speed or any other issue. I just smiled - another unsatisfied Helstra customer has moved on.

[Vt-Brrrlina]

for service try calling one of their helplines.... tesltra bigpond (for a friend) was on hold for aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaages,,,, my iinet was on holkd for about 1 minute which included the usual babble from the recorded voice......

oh dont get me started on the voice prompts... none of us speak indian so it aint never gunnna work!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Shearer]

Ahhh...... Helstra's voice prompts

It's ironic there's no instant voice prompt at the start of the call that says

"Press 1 to speak to a human"

[illusionalvr]

how about speak to human, aussie accent.

im not being nasty but FFS!

[PaRaDoX]

What a load of crap, 3rd parties pay **** all to rent telstras systems. The government has stupid laws in place to prevent telstra from really profiting (such as selling net prices cheaper than what they supply to other companies).

Good on telstra, I hope they do it. Might stick it up the governments who keep forcing them to provide services to companies cheaper than they can provide it for their own customers.

you are correct sir! Telstra own about 70-80% of the copper POTS (plain old telephone system) infrastructure in Victoria. Optus own the next largest chunk followed by AAPT.
You say you have naked DSL? what you really have is a single ULL probably back to the Telstra DSLAM, Nothing new really.

Telstra have wholesale agreements with other carriers allowing them to "lease lines" which means its a Telstra line sold by another carrier, where Telstra does not have copper they use other carriers. otherwise you wouldn't be able to get coverage outside the metro area with anyone else but Telstra!

Since your telephone line is already Leased as a part of Telstra at a FIXED RATE they cannot and do not on bill this. Optus change a fee for other carriers to use their infrastructure however this is NOT charged separately to the end customer.

End of story.

[Julie]

Oh I agree with sashyre here, telstra worst customer service ever! they tried ripping us off over a phone connection when we first moved in. The line was already here should have been no big deal we get a phone no and account with them but no they had to send out a tech to check there was a phone line- there obviously was one we called the ****ers from it. They said if we were mistaken and they had to put in a new line it was so many hundreds of dollars but if it was their problem there would be no charge. So tech comes out here, has a look, obviously we have a line he figures out the problem- stupid telstra has teh wrong house no. in their system, their problem no charge. A few weeks later we get a massive bill for a new connection. Call the bastards up explain to them, get called liars told that they did put in a new connection we just muct have not seen him do it, got bounced around from one moron to another- all stupid bitch, one mole even hung up on hubby. After about a dozen calls got onto a bloke there who had half a braina nd found the work order and seen we were right and he fixed up our account. They have left a bad taste in my mouth every since.

[ClairBear]

Thanks for reminding me Julie. Another Helstra story along the lines of yours. Moved in with my bro for a while. He had an existing phone line he had never hooked up. Rang Primus to connect and they asked me to plug in a phone and grab the number. Did that and the next few weeks were a comedy of errors. Helstra kept coming back to Primus stating there was no line in the house. Yes there is/no there isn't/yes there is/no there isn't/YES THERE IS I PLUGGED A PHONE INTO IT AND DIALED, and no I don't take mind altering drugs!!!!!! Nothing worse than someone insinuating you are mental.

So out comes the Helstra rep one day when I am at work and proceeds to hook up a new line, he dug out the pit out the front of the property then called it in as he couldn't get into the house. Who authorised the new connection to this day I still don't know. Anyway turns out the lines had got messed up in the pits somewhere and the number I was giving belonged to an address around the corner. However I got a bill for a pit work I refused to pay. Eventually the lines got sorted in the pits and I got an active phone line.

During that entire saga Primus were brilliant, they rang me often with progress updates and apologised many times - for Helstra errors and bad management.