angryWe have the landline and the internet with them here. Sadly, we have no other choice on the internet front, as the house can only get cable. So, we're on some unlimited* $129.95 per month plan with them, which gives us 60gb of downloads a month. There's four of us in the house. Now, in February, my brother downloaded a whole fuckton of stuff, resulting in a whopping $1301 of extra usage charges. So the bill we received in March, for February, was $1469 (including internet, landline and a little bit overdue from last time). Straight up, my husband and I paid the overdue bit (that was our bad). Then there was a bit of a wait as my brother tried and failed to scrounge the cash to pay his $1301, and eventually got our Dad to loan him the money. So Dad paid the $1301 on the 9th of April. A few days later, we got an overdue bill for $1469. I ignored it, as sometimes it takes a little while for the payments to come through on Telstra's end.
A few days after that, we got the bill for March, which was $183 + $1469. Much more reasonable for the month of March, bit weird that the whole amount for Feb is still on there, but whatever. On the 28th of April, we get a suspension notice saying if the full amount of $1469 was not paid by the 5th of May, our services would be suspended. I called Dad and told him they hadn't received his payments (or ours, that we'd been making along the way). Dad called me back and told me that he'd called Telstra and gotten an account balance of $213. Relieved, I thanked him and figured there must be a stuff-up at their end with the bills.
Come the 6th of May, we wake up and there's no internet. Or phone. Luckily, my brother's mobile is on Dad's account, so he calls them on that. He speaks to a woman who tells him it will be a few days before they can sort anything out. I tell my brother to call them back and hand the phone over to me, because I was the one who had all the bills and knew what was going on. So he calls them back, authorises me to talk to them, and it begins. I talk to a woman first, who tells me that she too can see $213 overdue. She then tries to tell me this is why our services have been suspended. I point out that the amount of $213 is at the moment 6 days overdue, and they do not suspend services for that. I ask what the last payment they received was. She said they'd received $1469. I asked when they received it, she claimed she didn't know and I would need to speak to credit management. I asked her to put me through to them. She then asked if she'd helped to resolve my enquiry. I told her she most certainly had not, and then she transferred me.
I then got an person with a thick Indian accent called Michael. The bitch I'd spoken to previously hadn't done a warm transfer, so I had to explain the whole lot all over again. This time, I was told that they'd received $1301 on the 14th of April. I asked why, then, I had a piece of paper dated the 28th of April saying the full amount of $1469 was overdue. He said they were having a small problem with their bills. I told him I wanted our services reconnected. He said we would need to pay $30 that was overdue from March. Try as I might (and I did try valiantly), I could not understand why he thought we owed $30 from March. However, after what was approaching an hour on the phone to Telstra, I told him I would pay $30 if he'd reconnect our services straight away. He agreed, and I gave him my credit card details. Our internet was back on as soon as I got off the phone with him, the landline took a little longer.
So, you'd think after that it would be sorted, right? Wrong. Today, I received not one, but two Telstra bills in the mail. One was for the month of March, with $1499 oweing, saying $30 was overdue from the previous bill. The next was for April, saying $1469 was oweing, and thanking me for my payment of $30.
I have no freaking clue what's going on now, or what we owe Telstra. I am pretty sure, by my calculations, we should only owe them $90. But I dread having to call them to find out the exact number...