Customer service update
Filed under: BigPond, consumer, customer service, news
On Friday afternoon I was alerted to an incident where one of our internal tools was made available on the internet, which was nothing short of alarming. It was inexcusable and not the sort of situation we expect of ourselves, or our company, which has a proud history of providing what I consider to be very secure methods of protecting its customers’ information.
Importantly the issue has been fixed and of course our priority is ongoing protection, privacy and security of our customers’ information.
Once we were alerted to the incident, our first priority was to bring the site down which we did. We then took the decision to shut down access to all related sites including BigPond email and online billing.
I can assure you it’s not an easy decision for an internet service provider to shutdown access to all BigPond mail services and related sites, but what was more important was the security of our customers’ information.
You could perhaps compare it to a security incident at the airport – even though the offender can be isolated, as a precaution the whole airport is evacuated, which in our case meant bringing down access to BigPond mail, a really tough decision, but the right one.
By Saturday afternoon we started to restore services, however as an additional security measure we reset the passwords of some of our customers. In many cases our customers had to call us for assistance to change their password. If you have since accessed your account with your old password, you will not have been impacted in any way by this issue.
This resulted in long wait times over the course of the weekend and for that I apologise – I am sure you all had better things to do than wait on hold for a consultant. To help, we increased the number of consultants; however some long wait times remain. Our staff are doing the best they can under the circumstances and I thank them, with many working long hours and extended shifts to assist our customers.
Our consultants are this week progressively contacting those who have been affected to assist them with any queries and password resets if required. We have also sent all our BigPond customers an apology email. We will work with our customers individually to get them back on track. Anyone with concerns or queries should contact us on 1800 991 053.
“Our staff are doing the best they can under the circumstances”
And that’s the problem; your staff’s ‘best’ is simply not good enough. Never has been. Probably never will be either.
Have you bothered to read the feedback, on this site, to your customers problems with your staff? My wife has spent hours on the phone to your ‘staff’ attempting to rectify issues; it’s a disgrace.
Save your spin; Telstra is about as popular as an Australian bank and you only have yourselves to blame. You have NEVER cared for your customers as you are driven solely by greed.
How about a online password reset form maybe? I’m not in any hurry to have my password reset but I don’t want to have to wait 30mins to a 60mins only to be disconnected or what not. Doesn’t worry me if it takes 3 days after filling out the form to get a new password.
To be honest resetting passwords was a kinda pointless idea. If evil people saw the password then they already know what info they need to give DOB account number etc to get a new one. Maybe someone saw my account and called up changed the password. Now are reading my emails and changed my bundle as I have no way of knowing.
Tom, Sorry for the inconvenience caused. Is everything sorted out now for your email access? Get in touch if I can help. Brendan
Well no I’ve been waiting for the creation of a online form for the password reset. The telstra customer support people on facebook said there would be a form eventually they are just not sure when it will be done.
As said before I don’t have much interest in calling only to be on hold for 30+mins only to be disconnected or for me to hang up due to frustration. Which I have seen people on whirlpool, facebook and twitter say its happened to them so knowing my luck Id have it too. Also waiting for the online chat to work so I can order a modem for the 100mbit upgrade.
Every time I try to log on, a rotating icon appears, and goes on and on for ever. How can I get rid of it, and resume sending and receivingg emails?
I have had a frustrating 3 days on the phone to Telstra with various issues, one of which is that i cant access Telstra My Account and am being told that i have never been registered, despite logging into it everymonth for 2 years and it storing my credit card details. I have also been told this has nothing to do with the service issues/faults you have had. I also have received advice that both mobiles are considerably over their call allowance at only 15 days into the month, the first concerned me and i increased my plan, the second is my husbands and cant fathom how his could be over, and now think all these things could be related, meanwhile i have committed to a higher plan. Very frustrating. if I didnt have to use Telstra I would go elsewhere (only decent TAS coverage). issues and mistakes happen, but it is the way the processes are managed that I am frustrated with… AND the fact that I am probably stuck now with a higher plan that is unnecessary.
Hi Toni, I’ll do what I can to help clarify things for you. Please use this form to send your contact number and I’ll have someone call you as soon as possible
Whats the point of sending an apology email?
THE EMAIL’S NOT WORKING.
I finally got through to a Telstra service person this afternoon (14th December) only to be told that if they reset my email password, there is a serious risk I will lose my internet entirely!
What sort of tinpot organisation is it that they can’t fix this after almost a week?
Hi Neil, I’ve asked a local team to call you asap to check that everything is ok with your account and access.
No, everythings not OK with my account.
I still can’t access email, and I still can’t access my Big Pond account.
I can’t even get to my phone bill which you insisted had to be sent to my email.
6 days without email – perhaps I’ll buy it a cake tomorrow to celebrate.
Hi Neil, Nadmin just infomed me that he’s spoken to you and you are having no issues now with your connectivity or account. Glad to hear that and sorry again for any inconvenience this caused.
I received excellent assistance with getting this resolved.
Thank you to the customer service and technical consultants involved.
The reaction by Telstra was quite unacceptable. As soon as I became aware of a potential security problem on the weekend I changed my password. On Tuesday I tried to log on to the Internet and email, hitherto working well, to find that Telstra had changed my password – no contact, no warning!! Tech support spent much time with me restoring service over at least a couple of hours. They were patient and eventually successful but the language problems did not help. There has got to be a better way to do this if a similar situation occurs again.
There are two questions that need to be answered here. They are very important and you havent answered them.
What was the system made public to the public and how did it firstly occur!
I am certain worried customers would like to know this.
Never received an apology email…hmm did Telstra really email every bigpond customer…..I don’t think so
….and what of MyEmail, the forwarding service to mobiles, has that been affected too as for the past TWO days all I get on my mobile when I try to access them is a “Login failed” message which has never happened previously, and no updates. I too can’t be stuffed with the bother of trying to call someone as I find that extremely frustrating and time-consuming. Whilst they do seem willing to help the “understanding each other” barrier overides there ability to grasp what a particular problem is and how to then adress it!!
Hi GeeDee, Please use this form to send your contact number and I’ll have someone call you as soon as possible.
“one of our internal tools was made available on the internet”
What was it doing on a public facing website to begin with though, indexed by Google no less? Customer information should inside your network, not in the DMZ and not facing the internet. But then, it’s not even sitting on Telstra’s network, is it?
“our company, which has a proud history of providing what I consider to be very secure methods of protecting its customers’ information”
You may have had that history in the past. Now you have customer data sitting with a totally seperate company (RightNow Technologies) that you have no control over. Looks like Telstra’s proud history is just that – history.
“Once we were alerted to the incident, our first priority was to bring the site down which we did.”
No – you didn’t. Members of the public were still accessing that site up to half an hour after it was published in major news sources online. It had been in forums before that. It doesn’t take more than half an hour to disable access to a website.
I’m happy you’ve apologised – thanks.
Now I’d really like you to come clean on why this happened and what steps you’re taking to stop it happening again. Will you be taking IT security back in house? Will customer data be stored on Telstra-controlled servers, in Telstra-controlled facilities? All of these things are possible, whilst still outsourcing your CSRs.
Thank you all for your feedback.
For those of you inquiring about cause, we are still investigating and those who posted they were still having issues, I’ve have made contact with you here and offline, and we are assisting.
Thanks again for your patience. Brendan.
I am having a problem with My Prepaid. Every time I log on to recharge my mobile broadband internet connection (using a voucher authorisation number) I get an error message: “An unexpected error has occured. Please call Telstra on 1258880.” This has been the situation for four or five days. I called the number provided and after a 15 minute wait got a helpful operator who took my voucher number and recharged my account. She said that you were aware of the problem and hoped to solve it soon. But as of five minutes the problem was still extant. When will it be solved?
This error is appeared.
I can’t chek my balance & recharge.
An unexpected error has occured. Please call Telstra on 1258880.
This is not ‘on topic’ per se but I don’t have time to trawl through the archives to find a thread that is vaguely related to what I want to say.
Although I totally despise Telstra as much as the next man and would never ever in a million years use them or their services I have once again, in an indirect way, become witness to how pathetic they really are.
I have recently moved to a new town and am renting a unit. Often, the mail for the last tenant comes and I put it back in the post with ‘Not at this address, return to sender’-pretty easy to understand, you would think. Well, guess which Telco has sent a bill for the previous tenant to this address no less than three times in the past month and a half or so despite having those letters returned to them with that very understandable message written on them?
Needless to say the letter I got today has a somewhat stronger message on it…Perhaps it may finally sink in? I don’t know how you people do business, I really don’t.
OK everyone get ready because my story is a ripper. Rang Telstra because I read about a possible privacy breach. Told 2 times “not to worry”, then if I wasn’t called then my details were “safe”. Then I rang again and the consultant I spoke to didn’t know what I was talking about.
So, concerned that I was, seeing as I had a silent number, I logged a complaint with the TIO (Ombudsman). That resulted in no action apart from receiving a letter from a Subject Matter Expert that “your name and account were potentially accessed online due to a technical issue”. I naturally sought to immediately have my mobile services and wireless broadband stick transferred to a new account as a precaution. Nope.
Then I raised the issue again with the TIO who said they would investigate further. That resulted in a phone call from a Senior Complaints officer who said that “it would be highly unlikely that Telstra’s position would change”. Great service.
I then tweeted about it and wrote a note on this exchange. Thats when things started to happen. I received a call within 24 hours. I started to think that I was finally being treated like a valued customer who spends over $500 per month (for a consumer, thats good dollars in Telco money). I was verbally advised that I could exit both ADSL contracts without penalty, had all my mobiles transferred to a new account and they actioned the cancellation of my primary ADSL service that day. Yay!
Too early too get excited. The TIO came back and said that Telstra was deciding not to release me from my second ADSL service as that account had been determined not to have been breached. When I naturally asked if Telstra would provide the evidence they used to come to this decision, I was told the Subject Matter Expert “NO”. When I asked why the resolution offered by the wonder case manager (as a result of my online anger) was no longer available the answer I got was “that was Telstra’s decision”.
I asked this rather polite man whether he thought that rescinding a verbal offer was fair on me as a customer, the answer he gave (and I quote) “that is Telstra’s position on the matter”. Great customer service. NOT.
I have tried to have the matter resolved by the TIO, fail. I almost had it resolved by the wonder case manager as a result of my anger online, but it seems she is lower in the food chain than the Subject Matter Expert.
I have been a loyal Telstra customer for some 7 years now, and I will happily pay the early termination fees on my 3 mobile service to leave this disgusting company for someone who actually gives a sh*t and has some ethics.
I don’t expect this post to actually get me anywhere, but I will be:
1. Writing to Sen. Stephen Conroy
2. Lodging a complaint with the privacy commissioner
3. Ringing A Current Affair and those other tabloid TV shows
4. Sending this complaint, via email, to every media outlet I can find to see whether anyone else has had the same shoddy treatment.
5. Writing to my local member, oh yeah, she is the Prime Minister.
6. Vocalising my distrust and sheer frustration at dealing with this company from any vantage point I can find.
Telstra, I consider you to have materially breached your own Customer Terms and I hereby give you the required 14 days notice in writing that I will be seeking an exit to my ADSL contract without penalty.
Am looking forward to the reply.
Hi Adam, the CEO team have notified me that they have this in hand and are aware of all your correspondence. Brendan
Thanks Brendan. I received another call from the “subject matter expert” I have been dealing with – so I am not confident of a happy outcome, but I will post this as the matter resolves.
The Privacy Commissioner was most concerned that Telstra would not provide the evidence that they used as a basis to advise that one of my accounts was not compromised. They had suggested that if this remains the position of Telstra that this will be escalated for resolution.
I used to be be such a strong promoter of Telstra – now I wonder why?
Oh, forgot to also let you know that Senator Conroy’s office will be escalating the matter to Telstra as well. I have a phone hookup with the producer for Neil Mitchell’s program on 3AW next week and also with the ABC local radio in Melbourne and Brisbane.
How much is negative publicity worth I wonder? I am sure it is more than the $320 Telstra is holding me to.