Moorooka,    Qld, 4105

                                    17 December 1999

Narelle Culpan

Customer Service

Optus

                               Re: (07) 38922313                      Dear Narelle,

                                    Congratulations!  You have finally done it. After two months, innumerable phone calls and many letters I have finally got Optus to perform a simple task -- bar STD calls from my phone.  You've really got some big brains working for you --or should I say sleeping for you?

                                    I now have a harder one for you.

                                    Ever since I got the Optus cable in, my internet calls have kept dropping out.  I get on to my ISP and the connection is often cut within a minute.  The ISP techies tell me that it is an Optus problem that anyone with an Optus cable and a modern (56k) modem tends to have.

For some obscure reason Optus wires are not yet as good as Telstra wires at handling modern internet traffic.  I was not of course warned of this gross inadequacy when I signed up for your service.

                                    This seems to me to be utterly disgraceful. Is Optus in the modern world or not?  Do you only want to run a pre-internet company?  Are you total dinosaurs?

                                    The effect of your grossly incompetent service is that I have to keep ringing back to re-establish my internet connection.  You force me to make two or three calls where one should do.  This doubles or trebles my phone bill -- to your obvious dishonest benefit.  You are in effect stealing from me. You are no better than pirates.

                                    Please advise when this problem will be fixed and credit me for at least 50% of the calls I have made via your lines to my ISP (Ph. 07 3240 1500).

              If you wish to contact me per phone please try my mobile first: 0413 836248.  Otherwise try (07) 3892 2313. My Email address is: Jonjayray@hotmail.com.                             Yours faithfully,

                             Morooka,

                                    Qld, 4105

                                    9 December, 1999

Chris Anderson

CEO

Cable & Wireless Optus

                             PERSONAL

                                           

Dear  Mr Anderson,

                                    Why do you keep handing over complaints to the feather-brained Ms Narelle Culpan?  She is polite but seems to lack any other skills, knowledge or abilities.  There is obviously a fault in your system which causes STD barring to be ineffective so please hand my problem over to a technically competent person.  There must be someone at Optus who knows what they are doing.  For your reference I enclose another copy of one of the unanswered letters I have sent to Optus in this connection.  I advise that I will not be paying either of the enclosed bills until the fault is fixed.

Chris Anderson

CEO

Cable & Wireless Optus

                             PERSONAL

                                          

Dear  Mr Anderson,

                        I regret to advise you that the faith you have placed in Ms Narelle Culpan is misplaced.  I wrote to you personally about the incredible bungling I have experienced from Optus and you handed my letter to her for response.  She wrote back a most eloquent letter of apology but did NOTHING to fix the problem. Please hand the matter to someone more capable.  I enclose further copies of the relevant correspondence.

                Moorooka,

                Qld, 4105

                                    9 November 1999

Chris Anderson

CEO

Cable & Wireless Optus

                             PERSONAL

                                           

Dear  Mr Anderson,

                                    I cannot believe that you personally are aware of the indifferent way even your senior staff treat your customers. For representatives of the "Yes" organization, they are past-masters at saying "No".  They have got me so frustrated at their inability or unwillingless to perform even the simplest of tasks that I think I have got to get the media interested in them -- or maybe I will just take a hacksaw and a crowbar to your cable.

                                    I attach a copy of a letter that tells you more.

           

                          Yours faithfully,

                          (Dr.) John RAY

                                   Moorooka,

                                    Qld, 4105

                                    9 Nov 1999

Telecommunications Ombudsman

                            Re: Ph. (07) 38922313                                        

Dear Mr Pinnock,

         Six weeks ago I changed my local phone service over to Optus.

I told them that I wanted local calls only and that all other calls must be barred.  So the first thing I did when their workmen had installed the cable was to check that STD calls were in fact barred.  They were not.  An STD call went through.  I told them to rip their cable out again immediately.  They assured me however that they could fix the problem by calling their head office and spent half an hour doing so.  When they had finished, I tested the phone again. This time an STD call did NOT go through.  Great, eh?  A cautious and careful customer had checked all he could to see that he was getting what he had asked for.

         Imagine my surprise, therefore when I received yesterday a bill from Telstra for five STD calls!  I promptly spent several hours on the phone to Optus and all I got was the information that they had lost my original application form and that they had not completed some part of the process needed to bar STD calls. Why the bar was put on and then taken off again they could not explain.  They also refused to refund me the $12.15 charged to me for the calls that they had negligently let go through in contravention of my explicit instructions. 

         Please get them to refund me the $12.15 and do whatever is needed to prevent any future such stuff-ups.  The recalcitrant customer "service" manager at Optus that I spoke to was a Mr Andrew Couch.

                      Yours faithfully,

                     (Dr.) JOHN RAY

Fax from:

                             Moorooka, Qld, 4105   

                            11.11.99                                 

 Optus    

                                                         

Re: Phone (07) 38922313              

Dear Sirs/Mesdames,                                                                           I have a problem with your service that your    customer service operators and their supervisors seem unable to solve.  I have called 1300 300 937 and 133066 and spoken to many of them for   hours on end in the last few days without result.  Please therefore     pass this letter on to some senior person on your technical staff.                                On 27th September 1999 I had an Optus cable  installed and selected Optus to provide all my services with the        emphatic instruction that all calls other than local calls were to be   be barred.  And whenever I ring your operators, they say that all non-  local calls from my phone DO show up as barred in their computers. BUT THE BARRING DOES NOT WORK.  Any STD calls made from my phone go        straight through with no obstacle or difficulty of any kind.  And the   bill for such calls then comes from Telstra!                                                      Your operators always try to pass the buck to Telstra for this but Telstra will have none of it.  I have spoken to  several of their operators (e.g. Tracy on 1800 011 333) about the      matter and they all say emphatically that my account with them is now   TOTALLY closed and that the only reason calls from my phone via the     Optus cable go to Telstra is because Optus puts them through to Telstra -- in clear contravention of my explicit instructions.                                              I reiterate that Telstra say that they now have NO  relationship with me at all and that they have received all the forms  they need to totally sever any connection with me.  They say it is entirely YOUR doing that calls go through to their network.    

                        I could fix this problem myself in a matter of minutes by changing back to Telstra at no cost to myself.  I know from  experience that THEIR barring does work. But I am not going to let you  off the hook so easily. I want you to solve this problem.                

                      Yours faithfully,                                      

                      (Dr.) JOHN RAY