I thought I had all the bases covered.

I made my normal speech to the nice Telstra-person on the phone saying ‘Sorry, I’m not a Telstra shareholder, just an ornery old customer. But I’m going to ask you to do something for me: think of all the questions I should ask _in my interests, not Telstra’s_ etc. etc.

But it didn’t happen.

[Note for non-Australians: Telstra is our largest telephone company].

Our mobile phone was stolen. So we went to Myer for a new phone, new number, new Telstra contract to replace the former. Our speech to Telstra was along the lines of… ‘We don’t want to use that old number ever again!’

Mistake. The nice Telstra-person responded: ‘So you would like a bar on that number?’ – which I thought was answering my request, so muggins said ‘Yes!’

Mistake? We’ve discovered we’re still paying the _rental_ for the old number, even though the phone hasn’t been found, no one’s used that number, and we’ve entered a new rental agreement at the same time as discontinuing the old one etc. etc.

Now I phone another nice Telstra-person and say I’m not paying the rental for the last three months on a mobile phone whose contract had finished and I’d stopped. He said ‘But sir you only requested a _bar_ on that number, not a discontinuance of the contract…’;

You can guess the rest. Threat of a report to the Consumer and Business Affairs people and lo! a ‘will you hold for a minute’ consultation with someone forgave the rental amount…

So be careful! There’s obviously a special brand of cunning bred into Telstra-people…

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Shalom! Rowland Croucher