It doesn't matter who you are, it seems some phone companies still keep their customers hanging on the line.
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Just ask former ACT treasurer and deputy chief minister Ted Quinlan and his wife Shirley, who have had tortuous dealings with iiNet.
They have been without a home phone for nearly three weeks after it was cut off by iiNet which claims the Deakin couple failed to pay a $104 monthly bill. They reckoned they never got the bill — which they get in hard copy and irritatingly always on the date it is due — but paid it regardless. The phone was still disconnected. That's when things started to get all Kafkaesque.
They've spoken to operators in South Africa, the Philippines, Victoria and Western Australia. They've had technicians in their home for hours. They've made countless calls. Been put on hold for ages. Told someone will ring them back and they never do.
But, miraculously, the couple say as soon as The Canberra Times rang iiNet on Thursday to get a response, they were told the problem had been fixed. We await to see that is actually the case.
"It seems to have stirred them into rapid action which makes me wonder why things couldn't have been done earlier," Ted said.
The Quinlans this week also ended up filling a complaint with the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman.
"I've been a TransACT customer for 14 years," Ted said. "It's actually been quite stressful."
Shirley said the service level was "as low as it could possibly go".
We're guessing the average iiNet operator wouldn't know Ted from a bar of soap, and he certainly doesn't expect them to, but iiNet can't ignore its Canberra connections. TransACT was, of course, a homegrown company sold by ActewAGL to iiNet in 2011 for $60 million, long after Ted left the Assembly.
An iiNet spokesman said there were a "combination of issues" around the fault but "the good news is, it's fixed".
