So I’ve been getting odd messages on my PDA telling me my home phone account is suspended because our account is overdue. Oops you might say… except the account *wasn’t* suspended…!! Eventually (i.e. today) I thought I ought to ring and find out what was up, not having been there for some time but when I did ring I got a small surprise.
Seems this was a side-effect of cancelling the old credit card when I lost it and the ‘bill’ was from a company called Dodo. This bunch used to be my ‘backup’ Internet access at one time because my normal access point was so unreliable. Anyway, it appears that a year ago or more I agreed with them (they said) to upgrade my line to ADSL… and I would channel International calls from the home phone through them. Now I don’t recall this, but as you’ll know this is nothing unusual either.
Anyway, after a little argy-bargy I told them I wasn’t happy because not only had they taken ‘International’, they’d also appropriated STD and mobile calls as well… and I’m sure I never agreed to that!
It didn’t help of course that they seem to be using a call centre somewhere in India and to make it even worse… using it on VOIP. The result was a very bad line that sounded as if they were shouting all the way without benefit of an amplifier and using an accent that made my welsh jabber sound like BBC received pronunciation!
As you’ll gather, I eventually I decided to cancel the service. How much it’ll cost to cancel is still unknown because they weren’t able to tell me… nor could they give me a proper address to send a bill to… hmmm… a dodgy bunch by the sound of it. Still… with luck they’ll be gone soon.
Next step was to contact the national carrier (Telstra) with whom all the other accounts happily reside and ask them to make sure the bits that had been purloined were returned. While I did that… I made some enquiries about my broadband account.
Whoopee… seems I’ve been paying $100 a month on an old plan that would now cost $69 and have a greater download limit. Excuse me while I groan 😦 Anyway… after looking at the plans I changed it to ADSL+2 (I think – needs checking at the exchange before we’re certain) which will still be $10 or so a month cheaper *and* still have a greater download limit. What’s more they gave me a $180 rebate to cover the time spent paying the ‘excess charges’ since Xmas! Nice I thought 😀
I think I mentioned moving a week or three back… this would be one of the reasons for doing it… to find out what the hell we’re paying who and for what. Currently things financial here are chaotic. A week with a spreadsheet and a pile of bills wouldn’t go amiss to see what is going where. Maybe the wife could set one up for me to just sit and enter data into?
The Eclectic Interweb 