
ISP protester's problem solved by police called to remove him from store - tankenmate
http://www.smh.com.au/business/consumer-affairs/police-called-to-remove-man-from-telstra-store-instead-solve-his-internet-crisis-20171231-h0btca.html
======
cyberferret
A case of a successful police negotiation with Telstraists? :)

NB for international readers - Telstra is our local Australian national
carrier and the telco at the centre of the story.

Maybe I should call in the police to negotiate my case with them too - my
office line redirection has been down for weeks, and no support agent can
solve it while on the phone. They have 3x now given me a callback text with a
web link to resume the call that never works. First thing in 2008 I am
cancelling my Telstra phone service!

~~~
will_hughes
> First thing in 2008

Hello time traveller. While you're at it, buy/mine Bitcoin. It seems crazy,
don't worry - it doesn't get any less so. Sell it Mid December 2017.

Also, if you're not getting anywhere and it's a business line service - find
out who your account rep is, and call them up to fix this kind of rubbish.

Otherwise, yeah, go sit in a Telstra store until the cops turn up to fix the
issue.

~~~
cyberferret
:D I can see now that my failing this year will be typing '2008' rather than
the more common mistake of '2017' for the next few months!

Actually, we do have a Telstra business rep, and I have spoken to her twice
now with no result either. Very disappointing.

But on to a more positive note - Another HN user who actually works for
Telstra saw my post above and reached out to me via email to try and reach a
resolution. I really appreciate that he did this on (a) a public holiday and
(b) took some effort to find me email address to reach out to me on.

Fingers crossed that he can sort things out where others have not been able
to.

~~~
will_hughes
>Another HN user who actually works for Telstra saw my post above and reached
out to me via email to try and reach a resolution

Good to hear.

Checking your profile seems you're rural - The old Telstra Countrywide unit
used to have a _lot_ of influence over the organisation, to the point where
they basically ran their own show and told the rest of the organisation to
GTFO on most of the corp processes.

Ended up with some interesting showdowns, but usually meant a better outcome
for TCW customers (sometimes at the expense of Retail customers where there
were boundary conflicts)

> I have spoken to her twice now with no result either.

If you don't get a good response, Escalate it - find out who their manager is
and call that person.

One of the advantages for having a business service is that there's a defined
SLA with penalties. It used to be 4 hour response, 8 hour restore minimum for
all business services.

If it's been down this long you should be getting a decent rebate.

~~~
cyberferret
I thought about asking for a rebate, but honestly, I've been so disenchanted
and discouraged by their lack of service that I just want my office number
redirected to my mobile, and my VoIP and NBN Internet service with them
terminated immediately. I can't terminate my mobile services yet as they are
on plan until the end of 2018 and the penalties are too high.

I'll see what our helpful HN Telstra user can do for me, then I might consider
applying for a rebate for the weeks upon weeks now that my customers have been
getting a 'this number is not connected' message when they try to ring my
business, resulting in many clients assuming I am not operating anymore.

------
abtinf
Are Australian police trained and measured on their ability to resolve civil
disputes on the spot?

~~~
Simulacra
Imagine if American police could be trained to use negotiation tactics, and
de-escalation methods.

~~~
ars
They are.

Remember: If it's in the news it's rare. This means that Police violence in
America is rare, and Police negotiating with an ISP is rare.

~~~
dade_
How is 1188 rare? 100 people a month is absurdly common.

[http://killedbypolice.net/](http://killedbypolice.net/)

~~~
albntomat0
Out of a country with a population of 320+ million, with 750,000+ "sworn
officers" (able to make arrests) [0], 1188 is not "absurdly common",
especially as that count is an overestimate of the objectionable cases (by how
much is difficult to determine).

The issue with police shooting deaths is not that there is a high likelihood
of an individual dieing tomorrow (for reference, drunk driving deaths are 10x
police shooting deaths [1]), but the injustice of innocent people being
killed.

Accurately representing the problem, and avoiding the "all police are
terrible" comments is vital to actually trying to fix this, as a solution
necessitates actively working with police, the vast majority of which have
not, and will never, shoot anyone.

[0]:
[https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/nsleed.pdf](https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/nsleed.pdf)

[1]:
[https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impa...](https://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/impaired-
drv_factsheet.html)

~~~
OscarCunningham
It's a small number of deaths per capita, but quite large per police
interaction. So it's possible that the knock-on effects are worse than the
injustice. The police would be much less useful if no one ever called them,
and why would I call them if there's a significant chance of them killing me
or someone else?

------
merb
well the problem is that most problems can be helped with first level support
where the personal isn't trained for deeply technical stuff, they just need to
follow their checklist. most often if you are not somebody who has an easy
problem your pretty much screwed. since telekoms have a very bad way of
escalating stuff to their trained personal. (probably because it's not cheap).

------
ajeet_dhaliwal
Good for the police. I don’t live in Australia but after reading this story
Telstra sounds like a terrible company. Are there no competitors?

~~~
hvindin
They own all the actual cable in Australia. So are essentially our only tier 1
ISP. Everyone else just needs to buy services from them.

~~~
caf
The copper pair and HFC lines in NBN areas are transferred into the ownership
of NBN Co (though the ducts that they lie in remain Telstra assets).

