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.