ajft

What a pathetic joke. There's a problem with my Bigpond account and the online billing.

• I can see my bills online
• if I hit the "email" button to try and email any bill to myself I generate an internal error on the http://my.bigpond.com/ website.

Lodged the problem report with them exactly one year ago today, called several times during August 2007 and was told nothing helpful, then two months later had finally got it escalated and then was told I could not call them but had to go away and wait and they would call me when it is fixed!

Well a year has passed and it still doesn't bloody work!

Thread: last next

From some browser tabs I'd left open over the weekend, here is a speed test I ran on the Bigpond ADSL 256/64 service I use:

Hmm, its been two months now, surely Bigpond have made some sort of progress on my problems with their billing system... surely...

Interactive telephone games, 133.933, 1, 1, 1, 2, 03, home phone number, #, yes, yes, yes... Aha, a human. “What can I do for you today?”

“I lodged a problem report on August the 8th, called again on the 10th and 14th,, then had it escalated on August the 21st. On August the 29th I received a call to see whether I still had the problem and I did. I have heard nothing since.”

A little time on hold, a little wait, then this classic statement:

“It's been escalated up to the helpdesk guys which is up on high and there's no telling how long those guys'll take.”

I pointed out that it has now been two months. Another little wait on hold while Shannon investigated further.

“There's no phone access to them, only email, so you'll just have to wait and there's no telling when they'll get back to you”.

So it could be two days, it could be two months... it could be the middle of next year in which case the two year contract will be expired and I'll be finally rid of them for good and they can keep their broken billing system for all eternity for all I care.

Thread: last next

A Telstra Bigpond technician — presumably of the second level in support — telephoned to see if my problem with their billing system has been resolved. A short answer: No, since they have not yet resolved it!

Interesting in that I was told last Tuesday they would contact me in "about four to five days", with the implication that it would be fixed by then, but the first contact is in six days and that is pretty obviously just to verify that they have to start working on the problem!

Thread: last next

Ho hum, on it goes...

Three weeks, one problem, four phone calls, nine emails — today I spent 45 minutes on the phone and they reproduced the problem I first reported on the 8th, then again on the 10th, and will escalate it to a higher level of support!

The woman in support that I spoke to was very helpful, she expressed complete amazement that nothing has been done in three weeks and confirmed that the unpublished "wide-spread login problems" on a Friday afternoon two weeks ago was a typical "go away and stop bothering me" answer.

Unfortunately, all I've got to show for three quarters of an hour on the phone is a sore ear, a fault escalation, and the knowledge that my Bigpond password is now written down in the fault report (I didn't know they were allowed to ask for it, don't care, if my account is misused I can show that they are using it)

I've been told I should hear from them in "about four working days". I chose not to ask how whether four working days in Telstra corresponds to four calendar days, or four calendar weeks...

Thread: last next

Customer support my ass!

Second round of the Bigpond battle. Between lunch time and now I've exchanged six emails with the Bigpond help staff and gone over the same ground — I can login to http://my.bigpond.com/, I can see my bill, but I cannot email my bill to myself. Once again the email query has reached an impasse and I have to telephone 13xxxxxx whatever and play the interactive menu games.

Once again I have to identify myself and give a full verbal description of the problem and then the technical staff tell me that it is a billing problem and that they can't help me.

Once again I'm transferred to the billing people and have to again identify myself and again describe the problem, then they tell me that its a technical problem and that they can't help me!

I explain that I've been around this loop before and it isn't fixing the problem — this time I get both a technical and a billing person on the line at the same time and once again tell them the story.

They start trying to talk me through the procedure in Mickey-mouse words for flushing the Internet Explorer cache and clearing the cookies and I explain — again — that the problem can be reproduced on any one of six different computers, over four days at two locations, three operating systems, three web-browsers, any computer of any OS or browser that I walk up to.

Then I'm told that there is a current problem with the Bigpond website that has been going on for a few days that some people can't even login and to wait a couple of days and try again... I pointed out that it would be nice if this service outage was listed on their service outages page!

I'm almost suspicious of these mystery unpublished service outages, I get the feeling that they're quite handy for fobbing off customers who have odd technical problems — especially on a Friday afternoon.

Thread: last next

Yay Telstra (again). Since their account management system is incapable of handling my work address, I have to have my bills emailed to me. Due to "security reasons" they have to be emailed to my Bigpond account and I cannot have them emailed to any other address. (Note, I can have the physical bill mailed to any address). However I can have my Bigpond email forwarded to another account, so I send it to my normal work account.

The Bigpond bill for the 1st of August didn't turn up, it might have vanished with the spam, but that's unlikely, since I review the contents of my spam folder before deleting it all.

No problem — I thought — simply log onto the http://my.bigpond.com/ website and email myself a copy of the bill. Haha, not so fast.... Every time I try I am presented with the following:

  Technical Failure

  An error has occurred while trying to provide the page you
  requested. This may be due to a problem with your browser or may be
  as a result of a current system outage. You can check for outages
  using the Service Status page. If there are no outages reported on
  the Service Status page you may be able to fix the problem by
  closing all of your browser windows and reopening them.

Over the course of four days, three computers, two operating systems and two web-browsers I've tried to email myself a copy of the bill — with the same results every time.

Two days ago I lodged a query with Bigpond support asking for it to be fixed — a query that they said would be answered within 24 hours. The 24 hours came and went and I received another email telling me that my query would take longer than 24 hours. The second 24 hours came and went and I received a second email telling me that:

  We will need to attempt to replicate this error on our test
  machines. Please contact Help Desk by phone on 133 933 (Selecting
  Option 1, Option 1, Option 1) quoting your ADSL username. Once we
  have verified the account holder, we will be able to assist you
  further and forward the issue to our Server Complex department if
  necessary. Due to security and privacy procedures, we are unable to
  assist further via email correspondence.

I called and played the voicemail games, then I got to a person. The technical assistance was uninterested in "replicating the error" and told me it was a billing problem and that they couldn't help me with and transferred me to the billing staff. The billing staff then asked for name, account and date of birth again, since they can't have these transferred with the call from the technical assistance!

The billing staff can't help me with the website not sending me emails — that's a technical problem and I'll have to contact technical support! I explained that technical support were unable to help and had transferred me to billing support and that I wanted two things; a copy of my missing bill and the my.bigpond site fixed so I can send myself other bills. The billing support staff are unable to email me a copy of my bill, apparently because I am unable to send myself one!

There is a copy of my latest bill in the post being sent to my home address, and as for fixing the website so I can email myself other bills... “Other people are able to use it so there can't be a problem with the website”.

I guess I wait for the first of September and see what happens with the next bill....

Thread: last next

Aarg! On Tuesday I rang Bigpond up and was promised a return phone call within an hour or two, on Wednesday I lodged the same enquiry via email and was promised a response within 24 hours, then today, 48hours later I get an email telling me stuff all, and that I should call them on the phone!

Four paragraphs of advertising for their incredibly expensive 3G wireless network service and then:

Due to the complexities of ADSL with Home WiFi and the limitations of email, it is best for you to call our help desk on 133 933 option 1 option 1 option 2 and talk to one of our support staff for further assistance.

Emailed them back giving the details again and explaining the hassles I have with trying to ring them.

Later in the evening I managed to ring them, then get through to the right people, then, miraculously, I even managed to find out how to get Vista to talk to a Bigpond-configured ADSL router. Yay.

One small drawback — the WEP key and admin. password that were written into the front of the notes wouldn't work, so along the way I had to perform a complete hard reset of the Speedstream 6520 and re-enter all my details manually, losing the port-exceptions and all the security settings that were in their previously. I guess I can recreate the port exceptions from the software I use, but since the security settings were all made intially by the Bigpond setup CD I'll have to make them up!

I'm starting to think that getting Microsoft Vista on the new laptop was a mistake... It seems so slow! I know darned well it isn't the hardware...

Oh, and then there's the "service" from Telstra Bigpond... It seems that despite Vista having been available in development for almost two years and publically available for two months, they don't support it yet, or not in any information on their websites!

After half an hour yesterday of poking around with various wireless connection panels on Vista I gave up and plugged a piece of UTP in and set up a wired connection, then tried calling the technical support to ask how to get the wireless laptop to talk to the wireless router across less than a metre of desk space. Twenty minutes on hold and a very brief conversation, it seems that the special "Vista team" will have to call me back with this information. In response to my "When can I expect their call?" it was a "Oh quite quickly, should be as soon as they receive this email".

Well, its nearly 24 hours later and there's been no call so I've lodged the enquiry via their webform, ah, but there's problems with that since it appears that bigpond.com will only work with IE — something in there just won't work with Firefox on either Linux or Windows.

At least I've received a response, albeit just the automated one giving me a reference number [Reference Number:070411-004681] ...

I do not want to plug the special Bigpond USB wifi key into the laptop, I do not want to plug the lumping great Bigpond wifi PC-card into the laptop, I simply want to connect the wireless laptop to the wireless router, is that too much to ask?

Absolutely amazing! After just over a month of the Bigpond usage meter not working, when I checked it today it has miraculously come back to life. Still no mention that it is broken, the best I get was a confused verbal message when I rang up half way through November when I was told that some of the usage meters are incorrect for some of the accounts.

Almost half an hour on the phone to Bigpond/Telstra trying (unsuccessfully) to change the billing address for my broadband connection to go to Monash.

The online form has a number of small, fixed-length fields and no conceivable abbreviation of Rm 232, Bldg 28, ITS Division, Monash University, Wellington Rd, Clayton 3800, Vic. can be made to fit in the small, fixed length fields.

The Bigpond telephone staff tried, but finally admitted that they too were confronted by "the new billing system" with its small, fixed-length, fields and could not change the address. They transferred me to Telstra, who they explained could enable "single billing" of broadband and phone service, but then split this and send the broadband to a different address!

Telstra staff reviewed "the notes attached to the account" and stated that while they could change the billing address for the phone account, they couldn't do anything about the broadband. They transferred me back to a Bigpond billing consultant.

The Bigpond billing consultant stated that I'd initially ended up with sales staff, but promised to work it out. He tried several ways, but eventually admitted that he was confronted by the same small fixed-length fields and could not make the supplied address or any variation fit.

The only other option I was presented with was to receive email bills, but these cannot be sent to any address other than my bigpond one "for security reasons". So I now have to receive my bills at my Bigpond email address, automatically forward these to my Monash email address, then manually forward them each month to the administration staff to be paid!

The Telstra bigpond package turned up at home this morning, it contains one "insert and run" Microsoft Windows CD and one PCMCIA wireless card as well as the ADSL modem and ethernet cable.

I had carefully told the nice man with the almost unintelligible Indian accent that I needed the wireless card for a DESKTOP PC and that both PCs ran Linux and not Windows. So I've been given a CD I can't run and a wireless card I can't plug in! Absolutely zero instructions on installing any of it in the box.

Surprise, surprise, the account name and password I setup when I booked the service won't let me login to the bigpond website. Just spent three minutes in voicemail menus entering my phone number etc, only to be told “technical assistance is currently unavailable, please call again.”

Two hours later... second call, four minutes on hold listening to mindless music then I can get my password changed. No idea what the original one is, they can't tell. Tried to login with that password and it won't work, but the support person tells me it can take up to quarter of an hour to go through — i.e., if I still can't login call back and it'll be someone else's problem....

Another two hours then what a surprise, the new password still won't let me in. Three tries and the account is locked, time to ring technical assistance again.... Now I've been told that the account isn't active until after I've plugged in and connected the ADSL modem from home, so I have to wait until I get home and go through the whole rigmarole again.

Long delay, go home, unpack boxes, play with wires, put shiny CD into Windows laptop and follow the bouncing ball... Oo-err, now we're connected to the internet. Assorted bits of web browsing and software updates to check that all is working. Ten o'clock at night and I try to login to the Bigpond website — still no luck! Yet another call to that 13xxxx number, more voicemail prompts and a different story from a different helpdesk person: “there's a problem with the servers since about six o'clock and hardly anybody can login, try again tomorrow morning.”