Your torment may be monitored: despair and disconnection in telco land
How fragile is the infrastructure that allows us to live as we do today. Break one filament and you detach from the vast ganglia of modern Oz and are adrift with no way of getting back in touch except at the mercy of $7-an-hour sweethearts living in a country run by a dictator.
My house fell off the Internet. Pia, from Telstra, told me there was a blanket outage in my area. The NBN's fault. I waited a day before ringing Telstra again, whereupon I was told there was no blanket outage and never had been. Then Chubz, the only person who was rude to me in my extensive travels in disconnection, told me there was so a blanket outage. Next day Ali told me there wasn't.
Eventually I asked Ali if he knew who the ombudsman was. This kicked his game up a notch. "Oh, yes, sir. I am very aware of the ombudsman."
I bet you are. You're virtually his receptionist. Mentioning the ombudsman is the Viagra Option when dealing with telcos. It sparks big, big love. All of a sudden Ali was making the right noises. He took me off the Platinum plan without the punitive cancellation fee. He gave me a free modem. He told me to forget ADSL. Yesterday's technology, he scoffed. He'd connect me with cable on Tuesday, free of charge, he said. Which is where my problems really began.
Illustration: Robin CowcherCredit:
The linguistic barrier is just another ingredient to throw into the poisonous communicatory gumbo Telstra have brewed. I have nothing against Filipinos, Filipinas, or the transgender nationals of that country. (Filipenis and Filipenots are my suggested neologisms.) But I have a scant knowledge of telecommunications and when you farm out my telecommunicatory dilemma to people who speak a call-centre creole then I'm more distant from clarity than ever. These are clearly lovely people. But I need the clarity, not the loveliness. Give me articulate arseholes.
I've been on the phone for two hours. This is pretty normal. I'm waiting to talk to my sixth person for whom English will be a second (third?) language. These people have been trained and hived together in a Third World city to catch First World shit, and they are flawlessly polite. In the labyrinthine course of this call I have been apologised to 35 times so far. I keep tally of my apologies like a farmer counting sheep, each fifth apology I run a diagonal line through the previous four. But apology is just a type of sneer when you know it's a rote-learned tactic to defuse hotheads who have been driven, despite the early hour, to contemplate whisky and weed.
I remember as a kid sitting on the back seat of our Fairlane with my big sister beating me over the head with a Breakfast At Tiffany's Barbie. A brutal doll, hard as Oscar and bristling with bling. After every blow she'd say in a cartoon-mouse falsetto, "Sorry, Ansy. You're a good brother." Whump. Oww. "Sorry, Ansy."
I've lost touch with that sister. Could she have kicked on, become Telstra's CEO? Are they sitting in some enormous room whispering to each other about me, stifling laughter as they flick me from one to another? I got our new bitch here. I apologised to him til he cracked his head on his desk screaming of Audrey Hepburn. Then I apologised for the apologies. He called the apology for the apologies the final insult. Then I apologised for the final insult – which means it wasn't. Next I thanked him for being a loyal customer, hee, hee. Told him I understand completely, while mustratingking it clear I never will. Made him repeat his story. Here, you have a turn. Go for the record, girl. Make him start again.
They punt me back and forth; my frustration mounting like it does when I'm speed-dating nuns. But it must be endured. Opt out today and you start from scratch tomorrow. Another two hours ping ponged by a posse of professional apologists while my forehead bleeds.
Days late their cable guy arrives at my door and has a cursory gander and sneers and says my infrastructure is totes inadequate. And he makes it sting. Only the NBN can cable your place, he says. That'll be June, at a guess. He tells me Telstra have turned off my ADSL connection in expectation of hooking up the cable. I'll have to ring them and try and get it switched back on. But don't worry, he says, they're super-polite.