"Telstra ADSL - why would you bother?"

An article recently published states: "No compo for DSL crashes".
Telstra has ruled out any compensation payments to users of its crash prone ADSL broadband service despite heavy complaints from its retail and wholesale customers and isthe target of legal action from an irate customer.

"We don't offer rebates for technical problems," a Telstra retail products spokesman said despite the carrier's NSW customers, both retail and wholesale, being unable to use their ADSL lines for two hours Monday morning. The outage was the third serious problem the network has suffered in NSW alone in just 10 days. Telstra blamed this one on a Nortel Networks network card that needed replacing.

Systems integrators who are installing and running the service for businesses are also beginning to feel the pinch.

With three customers on ADSL networks, which include web and mail servers, Paul Davis of Scope Networks reckons he is already at least $3,000 out of pocket due to excessive time spent re-jigging customers' ADSL networks after the system has crashed. "And there must be 10,000 of us out there," he told iTnews

The Telstra spokesman said the company was "aware that they [integrators] have been impacted", but offered little hope of any recourse. "We are hoping they would want to work with Telstra, " the spokesperson said.

The problems with the ADSL network have been so disruptive to one Newtown, Sydney business, that lawyer Michael King of Kings Lawyers is planning to sue Telstra over what he describes as a "dud" ADSL service, supplied to him by Telstra reseller Primus Telecommunications.

"It's appalling. It's not helping my business at all. I relied on Telstra's representations that this was very fast, when in fact its just not there at all a lot of the time," King said.

He said he plans to commence proceedings very soon under sections 52 and 53 of the Trade Practices Act.
"We have suffered damages as a result of their ineptitude. They couldn't get a Tonka truck running. I'd be better off with a string and a can," King opined.

A spokesperson for Telstra's wholesale division said he was not aware of any compensation being paid to its customers but was "still checking' at press time.

This article, and others, http://iTnews.com.au/content.cfm?ID=12


(Published on 11-Jul-2001 14:24 by RossW, read 846 times)
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