Optus has the worst customer service!

[didi]

About 2 months ago I received a phone call from Optus sales department persuaded me to change my prepaid mobile account to a plan account, after a while i gave in and signed up for the account and that's how my nightmares began. First of all the sales person kept calling me at least 5 times that night just because she couldnt get all the information she needed at one phone call. Then she told me the plan account will activate within 5 working days. Two weeks had gone past and I was still on prepaid, I rang up their customer service and after 3 hours of speaking to at least 6 different people within 3 departments I was told NOTHING had been done to my prepaid account. I had to keep calling for 2 days and finally I was able to speak to a supervisor, she promised to change my prepaid to a plan altho she didnt apologise for the pain i had gone through. And then I realised they had me on a wrong address, and the same thing happened when I was trying to change my address! I was forwarded among the three departments becoz none of them was "responsible" to change my address or they were on an old system. After numerous phone calls they promised to have my address changed. Till now I still haven't received any bills from optus, I'm overseas at the moment and it is so frustrating thinking that they might still have me on the wrong address and what if they cancelled my number because I haven't paid my bill?!
What kind of customer service it is if they were unable to help me, not only that they were rude and my complains were nowhere to be heard!

[didi]

Just posting an update.

I just came back to Melbourne on Sat, and as I expected my account was inactive becoz of OPTUS'S FAULT I hadnt paid my bills. Fortunately with NGE someone from Optus sent me an email last week apologising for the inconvenience and asked me for my current address. I replied the email and only to realised that she will be out of the office until 30th April! So now I'm stuck with no mobile to use. I went to the outlet store, you think they can help you and No! The staff explained to me that the stores are just for retail and not for helping customers, if I need help I will have to (of course) call the customer service help line (again). What perfect example of customer service! I'm refusing to pay any late fees or penalty fees if they do charge me because I had organised someone to pay the phone bills for me and yet they never came. This is ridiculous, I have been a loyal customer with optus for more than 7 years, and I am so disappointed with the way they treat their customers.

[Madasever]

If you ever had to call Optus Customer Service, you will probably get the same feeling i did after a recent attempt to contact them. I did a google search for otpus message services (mobile phone) and found what i thought was their main website for info regarding contacting them. The first 2 options displayed are useless to most people trying to contact them and looks something like this ...
Optus Special Assistance Service

Call us on 13xxxx if you are an Optus customer with a medically certified life-threatening condition and you require an Optus service fault to be fixed as a priority. Find our more about our Optus Special Assistance Service.
Customers with Teletypwriters

Call us using your Teletypewriter (Mobile customers call 1800 xxxxxx. Home Phone, Internet and Optus TV customers call 1800 xxxxxx. Our emergency Teletypewriter number is xxx).

Since i am neither in a medically certified life threatening condition, nor do i use a Teletypewriter service ... after much frustration i learned that neither of these numbers could help me. Ok so this is not the first time i have had trouble getting in contact with OPTUS CUSTOMER SERVICE, so i decided that if i was having this much drama, maybe i wasn't the only one in the same predicament?

I also contacted them some time ago in relation to another matter, i waited on hold for 1hour and 23 minutes, only to be greeted by a voice of Indian accent (very hard for me to understand) ... i explained to the operator i was having problems understanding her, to which she placed me on hold and passed me onto her supervisor (also with strong Indian accent - very hard to understand) so after hearing a detailed answer (most of which i did not understand) i hung up in frustration and called another service provider who ported my number within 10 minutes of contacting them. This solved my immediate problems, as the newer provider was very helpful and gave accurate instruction in an english speaking (australian accent).

Optus provide services all over Australia, my question is why are my calls being placed on hold for 1 hour and 23 minutes and being transferred to an Indian call center where the instructions given are not easily understood.

In effort to vent my frustration, i called the TIO and was given a number to contact Optus complaints, surprisingly i spoke to an Australian operator in Adeliade.

[didi]

Isn't that just frustrating, no offense to any indians or people with other accents coz I am chinese myself. You know I had a taxi driver (with very strong accent himself) accusing me of having very difficult to understand chinese accent because the surburb I'm going to -Ripponlea- has a funny sound in nature (not due to my accent).
But my point is why can't they just do their job properly at the FIRST time, so that we as customers don't have to chase it up for like 5 to 6 times until they finally get it right and end up with a very unhappy customer or even losing the customer. I thought it is their responsibilities or is written in the job descriptions to do their job right. It's a complete waste of my time and stress over something that shouldn't be so painful. It takes them literally 2 seconds to fix my problems, and yet they stuffed it up. I'm not gonna complain about it anymore coz eventually someone from optus did contact me and fixed up my problem thanks to NGE. I work in as a retail assistant so I know how important good customer service is, I just think that level of disappointment can never be mended with any kind of compensations.