Telstra improves BigPond customer service, shaping

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 08 September 2010 17:40

Your IT - Home IT

Years after 256Kbps “fraudband” plans were abolished, Telstra has finally removed 64Kbps shaping speeds on its “higher usage fixed Elite and Ultimate broadband plans”, boosting shaped speeds from a glacial 64Kbps to a 256Kbps minimum, amongst several other customer service “enhancements”.

Telstra’s push to offer better customer service is very slowly taking shape with a series of “enhacements” Telstra has made to its BigPond services.

Some of these enhancements are so common sense you have to wonder why it has taken years and years and years for Telstra to implement them, but hey, better late than never I guess.

Telstra’s Executive Director of the Consumer Division, Jenny Young, explained that over 700,000 Australians had, as part of a formal feedback program, suggested these and other changes, but why did it take over 700,000 customers to make the same kinds of suggestions before Telstra would budge? Is this the number of people that will be needed to speak up for Telstra to make more changes in the future?

That said, it’s easy to be a critic – it’s much harder to actually manage the network and company most Australians use for their telecommunications, while fighting Government interference, competitive pressures and more.

So, what are these common sense changes that Telstra has finally made since first offering telecommunications services to the dinosaurs in the Jurassic era?

It turns out that BigPond customers wanted improvements to email, such as free extra mailboxes and transferable email addresses, free calls to customer service numbers, weekend appointment times, faster shaped speeds, additional customer service people who actually have a clue and more.

Telstra’s Jenny Young explains:

“BigPond customers told us they didn’t want to pay for additional BigPond email addresses, which is why we’re now making them free of charge.

“Our customers also said they wanted to keep their email address if they changed BigPond products (e.g. Cable, ADSL or Wireless broadband services), and now they can. Also, people coming back to BigPond can conveniently reactivate their old address – rather than having to take a new one.”

Telstra’s Jenny Young then explained the changes to raising the minimum shaped surfing speed, at least for the more expensive plans, saying:

“Feedback also revealed that we needed to up the ante when it came to the access speeds we offered customers who exceeded their monthly usage allowance.

“We’ve addressed this and later this month, customers on higher usage fixed Elite and Ultimate broadband plans who go over their usage will be shaped to 256kbps, four times faster than before”.

So, although consumers will still be punished for going over their usage limits, something that’s not unusual, at least surfing speeds will be baseline bearable, as opposed to the effectively completely unusable previous 64kbps minimum (on those higher plans).

What are the published details of Telstra’s other “enhancements”? Please read on to page two.