Yesterday afternoon the home phone rings, its telstra and some young girl starts rattling off that the call may be monitored for training purposes and asks if im ok with that to which i say yes thats fine. Then she asks me to say my full name DOB and address for security reasons so i do, beautiful.. or so i thought.
She then goes on to say that i am 'a little' behind in my phone bill, which i already knew and working on it. She then says on their records they haven't recieved ANY payments for our service i say thats impossible she said from what shes looking at theres nothing to say we've ever made payments..
Ok we moved into this house in MAY last year i find it hard to believe that in almost a year of being with them that we haven't made any payments. She said yeah we are looking at suspending your service. I said (trying not to sound sarcastic or rude) umm wouldn't you have suspended our service months and months ago? and she said well yeah.. and i said i remember a lady calling me saying our service was going to suspended and i remember going to the post office the next day and paying off the entire bill.
She then said well your account is behind (now listen to this) by $400 and something dollars... Ok if we have NEVER paid a bill and we use our phone daily, i call mobiles im sure our bill would be into the THOUSANDS being close to a year to having the service. i said that to her and she said oh maybe you changed providers last year, um no iv always been with telstra..
She then said to prove we have made payments and to stop them turning us off we have to find every receipt.. well thats going to be impossible they could be anywhere..
though atleast we only really have to pay $400.. i mean if thats how much we've racked up in a year..
i would ring telstra back and ask them and tell them abou tthe call, it does sound weird, and yeah, im sure they wouldn't just let your servce stay connected if you had never paid a bill!!
That sounds a little odd (speaking as a former Telstra credit management person). However it is not unknown for lack of payments to go under the radar for many months and huge bills to be faced. In that instance a payment plan would be offered to you, not a demand for immediate payment. And they would send you a letter informing you before suspension. 2 letters minimum in fact. How do you receive your bills, email or paper? Check your junk email because if they have gotten lost in there it is possible you have missed them.
Have you got online banking? That might be the easiest way to check your payments. If not try to find any receipt, and it should give you a reference of sorts. This will be enough for your bank to check the transaction and ensure you were paying to the correct account. We used to see people mispaying their account by one digit and paying someone else's bill by mistake, and that can be fixed quite easily.
Firstly of course call Telstra with your information to find out if it was a genuine call.
When you call them ask if you can add a password to your account or something because if this woman is not from Telstra she now has access to you account via fraud because she has the details required to prove ID over the phone. Definitely call them and confirm it was them though because this could be pretty dangerous.
have you set up or ended a single bill (with internet or mobiles?) in that time? account numbers can change when you make any changes to those sorts of services. also, in the past year or so, all accounts have been migrated from one accounting system to another. it may be that, in the trasnfer, previous payment history isn't showing on the new system... call and check that there is record on your file of the contact you received just to confirm it was someone from Telstra. then make a payment arrangement for the bill
This happened to us once...They rang and said they had not received any payments - she was checking an old BPay reference number (account number) - so all of our payments were sitting in this account that didnt exist anymore when they changed their systems over and got new ones or some rubbish lol
Anyway, turned out they had to open their eyes and look a little bit but we had sent it where our bill but they weren't receiving it properly their end.
So if you made ANY payments by BPay or EFT or CC then the transaction with be recorded on your statement. (Really important you keep ALL your bills for everything and write on the actual bill the date amount and method it was paid by and the receipt number. Or staple the receipt to the bill. You should keep them for 7 years.)
See...I dont give me details to someone who called me. I know its rude but I dont trust anyone on the phone unless I have called them in regards to my account.
I answer them with
how about you tell me...you did ring me now didnt you
and if they get nasty I ask them to send me something in writing and then I will contact them
I do the same when people ring me and im the wrong number....they ask me who are you and I say you tell me, you rang.
Be buggered if I am going to give out ANY of my details to any Tom, DFick or Harriet on the when I dont know who they are. You wouldnt do it for an email asking for the same info now would you?
Give them a call and check for yourself, if its not legit Id defently be reporting it
ok, i don't want to sound too lax on security here, but companies make outbound calls all the time. if things don't add up to what you know to be the case (ie, amounts you owe) then yes, make a call to follow up, but it is part of normal debt collecting policy for companies to make outbound calls to speak to you about monies owed. it's not fair to those making calls if you refuse to speak with them every time. they are just doing their job. if something seems fishy, yes, follow it up. but putting a blanket no on dealing with people because they have called you will make life very difficult - especially if you don't call them back. they ring to help you and stop services being disconnected.
to the OP - if something about this doesnt add up to you, call back and speak to the credit management team - they can look into your account further. if nothing comes of it, you can also complain to the customer relations team - there are contact details on the telstra website.
i have worked outbound in a call centre - it's hard to help people if they won't help you. it's fine to say that you don't want to provide details at that time, but if you receive a call and won't disclose your details, please call the company back immediately so as not to end up missing an opportunity to have them assist you. with Telstra, if your mobile is disonnected, it's a $33 fee (minimum) to reconnect - with home phone it's $59 (i think) if they are disconnected.
LS - with home phone accounts, you get a different biller code with every bill you get (crazy huh?) - if you set up your bpay to remember your details and automatically pay, it pays against old bills. it SHOULD come off your balance but sometimes they can't see that information without going looking further into it. it's a PITA. have had it happen before - told i wasn't making payments as i pay automatically each week and have the details saved in my biller stuff on netbanking - i had to go and pull up the details of what biller code i was using (account number or something changes - i dunno - makes no sense to me!) for them to track the payment - for some reason that i still can't work out, my actual account number had changed and it was going to an old account - they gave me more current details and i paid on that for future payments
Understand BG but there is no way I would give my date of birth and particulars over the phone to someone who has called me. It may be a companies policy but its also my policy and right to not tell a complete stranger on the phone those details.
This is only because ive seen the damage a scammer has done doing this. Yep...a friend of mine gave her details over the phone only to have the person on the other end not be who they said and book up $10,000 of items in her name. Her name was mud for a long time credit wise...so no I wont give me personal details, no matter who it is over the phone if they ring me. We have the right to some privacy and to protect ourselves
Mummywanna - have you looked for your old paper bills? The one's you get everymonth??? there should be stated on there your receipt numbers for your payments and dates
Having worked in outbound Telstra Mobiles, If you don't want to give too much info they let you choose a password. If you dont want to tell the password you can tell them 2 forms of ID that they have listed (like middle name and DOB) and they can tell you the password to confirm to you that they are who they say they are. Middle Name and DOB are such easy to get info that they aren't counted if you wanted to open an account as ID on their own, but if you already have the account they are enough to be able to confirm for both of you the correct ID. It is very hard work in an outbound sales centre. They have very high turnover because it is depressing work and the targets are impossible to reach.
The number of times I would get through ID and then tell a customer they were just out of contract for them to say "No-one told me it was coming up" for me to say "That's what I am trying to do" after them giving me the 3rd degree about ID. Often if they are calling you they have something important for you to know, so ID trading is a good way to do it. For example if you said that you are willing to give your DOB and middle name but she will have to give you the address to prove to you that she is who she says she is. When I was there we only needed full name and DOB to ID landlines, but generally they are not under a contract and can be altered any time with no additional charges.
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Does this seem a bit odd to you?
i say thats impossible she said from what shes looking at theres nothing to say we've ever made payments..
straight away
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