So I'm having problems with a phone company. I'm not sure what the laws are regarding bagging the hell out of dodgey telecommunications firms in public, and whether or not names can be mentioned without potentially icky legal consequences - so if you want to know who it is in order to avoid them, please email me! I guess I am within my rights to mention the crap ads involving a certain australian television personality with big, bad hair and a terrible fake italian/australian accent...

It all started with my having gotten 2 young ladies boarding at my house. These young ladies between them managed to rake up over $800 in long distance calls within a single month, then both left. It's not QUITE as bad as all that because I had this wonderful $59 call cap on my long distance calls, but that only covers up to $500, so I ended up with a $367.11 bill.

The due date of the bill was the 10th of April. I called them in March and said I needed a little more time to make the payments, and please cancel my telephone service because there was nobody actually living in the house (a complete other story - I might even tell it sometime). We came to an arrangement of $80 to be paid immediately, and $100 per month starting 2 months later. breakdown follows:

• $80 paid 23rd March, 2005
• $100 due 16th May
• $100 due 16th June
• $87.11 due 16th July

So that all adds up to the correct total, right?

Now... add to this the following information: In Australia, to add a black mark (or default) against a persons permanent credit record used by banks, etc, when deciding if they will loan you finance to buy houses, cars, etc, companies must give a MINIMUM of 60 days to pay a bill AND letter of intention to list the default. Why then did the aforementioned telecommunications company decide to default me only 17 days after the due date of the original bill?

Currently involved in major argument with said company, whose excuses range from claiming that the default wasn't placed until 2 months after the date that it was done, that I am a liar, that the amounts I had organised to pay were as follows:

• $74.21 on 8th March
• $100.00 on 18th of April
• $100.00 on 15th May
• $99.74 on 16th of June
• $110.24 on 27th June

Now, I'm no mathematician, and far be it from me to tell other people how to do their jobs, but HOW THE F^*^%$ does that add up?? According to that my first payment arrangement was 11 days before the bill was ever issued! Not to mention that I made the arrangement with them ON THE DAY that I paid the $80 as above (and they sent me the dates and amounts which I had paid, which reflect pretty closely what I had arranged with the exception of the last payment which was made 3 weeks early).

Given their inability to get dates and figures correct, does it come as a surprise to anyone that the woman dealing with my case cannot even get her email address correct on her email closing signature?? It's doesn't surprise me... For example, if her name was Idiot Woman, then her email address at this company is, in actual fact, idiot.woman@craptelecommunicationscompany.com.au, yet her mail signature states that it is i.woman@... I only mention this after having tried to email her at the claimed address and received a delivery failure notification with info that the email address just doesn't exist! So along with my many other reasons as to why they are incompetent, can we really believe the word of a woman who makes up figures, dates, etc and cannot even write her own email address correctly in the signature file that gets sent with each and every outgoing email? I think not.

By the way - did I mention that I have documentation to back me up by way of phone bills, credit agency reports, etc? I have all dates, amounts paid, everything required to prove her a fool... =)

So now a list of incompetencies has been compiled and sent to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman to deal with them and see if they can't have this unlawful default removed from my otherwise excellent credit record. I'll keep you informed!