Moorooka,

                                    Qld, 4105, Australia

                                     3 January 2001

CEO

C&W

                                         

Dear Mr Wallace,

I wrote to you some time ago about unending problems that I was having with Optus and found your response to be a courteous and helpful one -- in stark contrast to the swinish attitude of Optus themselves.  You did not however seem to have much influence on Optus.  Eventually it was our Australian Telecommunications Ombudsman who forced them to stop blundering about and  fix their problems. 

I am ever optimistic however and feel that you should know about their latest childish behaviour in case you can do something to pull them up.  I personally think you should sack the whole of their senior staff and start again.  Perhaps their eventual new owner will do so.

Three weeks ago, I agreed to take them on as one of my ISPs.  I of course knew they would bungle even something as simple as that but also knew that they could be made to fix it eventually.  So when the expected series of idiocies emerged, I sent them an email to advise them of it and hopefully to provoke them into getting it right.  I reproduce the email concerned below.  The tone of the email  reflects my prior experience of the senior staff at Optus.

So what was their response?  Something constructive?   Something positive?  Something intelligent?  Not on your Nelly!   The very next day, they  went in and changed the password on my internet account so that I could no longer get on to the internet via them.  An attempt to annoy  me was the sole extent of their talent!  I of course simply rang the help line and got the new password so even the attempt to annoy me made by these sad souls did not work.

Are these the sort of people you  WANT to have working for you?

Sincerely,

(Dr.) John RAY (M.A.;Ph.D.; M.A.Ps.S.)

Mobile Phone: 0413 836248;  Landline phone: (07) 3892 2313. 

Email: Jonjayray@yahoo.com   or:  Jonjayray@hotmail.com   

                                                         Moorooka, 4105

                                                         2 January 2000

Michelle Ford

Customer Relations

Optus

Michelle,

I knew it!  Against all reason, I recently signed up for another Optus service, knowing  full well that you would make a hash of it.  You have!

I signed up to use you as an Internet Service Provider on 10th December and in your anxiety to please you have opened up for me not one account but two!   I received the second letter today and the other about a week ago.  And the second one arrived DESPITE the fact that one of your operatives rang me last week and confirmed that I had received the first one!  You cannot get better bungling than that.   That's really gold-plated bungling that is.   I doubt that any one of you could run even a chook yard properly.  No wonder C&W is so desperate to sell you off. Maybe I should send a copy of this to Graham Wallace in London to encourage him to get rid of you.  Obviously, the sooner you go under new management the better. 

To help you sort out your obviously hopeless records, the username you have given me that I am actually using is Jonjayray. The one I do NOT  want is Jon_jay_ray.  Make sure you cancel the right one!

Now Michelle, there is another matter I want you to exercise your mind on.  I got your first letter only about a week ago so I first logged on to your service on 30th December.  But I am NOT in those circumstances going to pay a full month's fee for the whole of December.  I want you to date my account from the first log on and charge me again only on the same date of every subsequent month.  If that  is  too hard for you, I suggest that you waive the December charge.

From past experience I know it will be a strain for you but please have the brains to get this one sorted out now  instead of going through six months of correspondence before the TIO makes you sort it out.

Let me help you with another matter that could save you time and money.  The disk you enclosed with both your letters to me was totally inappropriate for its use.  It  was designed for  people who wanted to open an account rather than someone who already had an account opened.  The people who drafted your letters showed some awareness of this in that they included in their letter an instruction to log on to the disk as an existing user but when I did that the disk still sent me off on a wild goose chase --wanting my credit card number and telling me that my chosen account name was already in use etc.

Since the big brains in sales there do not seem to be able to work it out, you did not really need to ask me to use any disk at all in the circumstances.  You had already assigned me an account name and a password so all I needed was the dial-up number for my local area.  Had you included a list of these with your letter, THAT would have been useful.  I could then have simply thrown your disk in the bin straight away (which is what I did eventually anyhow).  Since you did not do that however, I had to ring up one of your help line operators and get the Brisbane dial-up number from him.  After that, no problem.

You really are unbelievable amateurs.

Yours faithfully,

(Dr.) JOHN RAY