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Telstra ‘wrong’ to claim outages are fixed

Telstra Mail has left customers without access to their emails.  Photo: AAP

Telstra Mail has left customers without access to their emails. Photo: AAP Photo: AAP

Telstra is again being blasted by furious customers experiencing network outages, many of whom say the telco was “wrong” to announce that its coverage was fixed.

On Friday morning, Telstra confirmed its network had experienced widespread outages across all capital cities and large regional areas – its fourth major outage in 2016.

Telstra then reported on Friday evening that “services affected today were restored”.

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But by Monday evening, many customers argued this was incorrect.

Drew Siegmann tweeted: “When are we going to receive an update on what’s going on with the ADSL? It’s been over 24 hours since the last and that was wrong too.”

Adept Editing’s Twitter account claimed: “Still no service in 4055. Your page saying all ok – wrong!”

telstra

Telstra’s outage map as of 9pm on Monday evening. Photo: Aussie Outages

Meanwhile, @Ric_WOz complained: “Your service status says nothing is wrong with my suburb! Nothing [coverage wise] since Friday morning. Whats going on? A direct response would be nice.”

Late on Monday night, Telstra told The New Daily that a “small number” of its customers were affected.

“[T]he network issue has been resolved but we are working with a small number of customers whose modems have not reconnected.”

The ABC also spoke to six customers who said their connection problems were ongoing and they had been left questioning the outage despite the Friday evening message.

Adam from Perth said his internet connection dropped out on Thursday night.

“There’s been no connection since that time. Went on to Telstra’s website and their helpdesk advice was that they’re rectifying the problem, then they posted one that said the problem has been rectified restart your modem,” he said.

“That didn’t help. The following day they posted another one saying that it had all been fixed but whatever you do don’t restart your modem, it makes it worse.”

Other customers said their work and their study had been significantly disrupted because of the issues.

Customers ‘should take action’

Consumer group CHOICE’s spokesman Tom Godfrey said Telstra mobile customers have suffered four significant mobile outages already this year and the telco giant’s response was inadequate.

He said if customers felt Telstra was not delivering an appropriate service, they should take action.

“Obviously businesses have issues from time to time but that doesn’t mean as a consumer that you can’t seek a remedy, particularly if this is ongoing,” he said.

“We need to remember Telstra is a premium-price service, people pay a lot of money to be with that company so I’d encourage everyone to keep detailed records of every outage they experience including any impact on their business operations and then seek compensation accordingly.

“Telstra shouldn’t be leaving you on hold and they shouldn’t be leaving you without your contracted service so if these problems persist I would strongly urge you to contact the ombudsman and report it.”

– with ABC

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