Return lease phone chaos

[Graham72]

Received a text message in December advising a satchel had been sent, to allow me to return my phone. No satchel arrived. Received a text this morning to say as I hadn't returned the phone within 14 days Telstra now take that as meaning I've purchased it and will bill me. An hour on chat this morning, get told they don't send satchels anymore (despite the chatbot offering that option again) and I finally got  details for very lengthy process for returning. But... the link they sent doesn't work.

So, another 45min on chat and get told "No, that's the old process". Get sent a different link that is just the 'mobile muster' recycling.

Don't trust any of them, going to make a trip into a store and leave it on their counter. Take a photo as proof of return. Have cancelled direct debit so they can't charge for the device if they stuff it up.

Pretty much sums up why, after 9+ years, I had a gutful and finally left Telstra (that and the fact that I'm now paying less than half I have been each month and I'm getting triple the data).

[Jupiter]

The better option than going into the store is to lodge a formal complaint via https://telstra.com/complaints

Otherwise you could end up with a damaged credit rating and the debt collectors rocking up.

Returning it to a store if you are not getting a new phone at the same time can cause issues with the returns process. Doing it through the complaints process will leave a paper trail and will get the issue resolved more cleanly.

[Graham72]

Thanks @Jupiter  I didn't realise an in-store return could be an issue but that's good advice. I'll lodge a complaint. It's ridiculous to spend hours on live chat to receive conflicting information, which in turn conflicts with the information on the Telstra website.

[Graham72]

Complaint lodged 👍

This time last year we had 3 numbers with Telstra (for the past nine years), we're now down to 1, and this experience will see us porting that final number to a new provider.

[Graham72]

Zero response to the complaint I lodged more than a week ago. Their website says they would acknowledge the complaint within 1 business day. I've now had to lodge a complaint about my complaint.....

[Jupiter]

It shouldn't usually take more than 5 business days to receive the initial response (so you should have received on by the end of last week). The problem with lodging another complaint is that it can reset the notifications in the system, effectively taking you back to the beginning.

[Graham72 · Accepted solution]

Ah well, that's their problem. I've made every reasonable effort, in a timely manner (and have the written records to prove that), whereas they can't even meet their own stated guidelines or execute a correctly functioning process. I'm heading back to work this week so my time to continue trying to resolve this has ended. I guess the handset will just sit in a drawer at home until/unless Telstra get their act together.  They've had about $30k out of me over the years in return for rubbish service (that they hilariously and innacurately describe as "world-class") and I just don't want to spend a single moment more dealing with them.

Thanks for your help anyway @Jupiter