It’s fixed now, but what can one do when the internet suddenly goes down and one’s ISP says they don’t know of any problems at all?
Can one contact NBN direct?
My problem was the ‘green box’ down the street - the Node box seems to have had a fault, but nobody seemed to know about it and tell the customers!
What is the best way to find out what is WRONG if it happens again?
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Hi @gowinter,
Even if your ISP is unaware of the cause of the problem, they are usually still the best ones to talk to as they have an obilgation to provide the service for which you have paid. I had a similar situation recently and it was resolved in about 24 hours.
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I had one not long ago (PSTN phone and ADSL both down) where I reported it and got a ticket number for ‘level 2 action’. 3-4 hours later everything started working again. A few days later I got a message from my ISP that a tech needed to attend and I could be liable for $120 call out if the problem was in my premises and needed to accept that condiiton.
They had no clue even though they were the only
and I informed them it had been fixed (or un-broken) 3 days prior and they could close their ticket.
It can be frustrating talking to our front line support since their windows to our problems are neither large nor ‘scenic’.
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Isn’t it illegal to threaten customers with fees for trying to enforce their consumer rights? Like it would be fair if it was totally your own fault for an issue, but the way you describe it sounds more like they’re trying to put you off seeking repairs they need to do. It should be worded more like ‘This is our fee for tech support, but if the problem is our service it’s free.’ And $120 seems like it’s a ‘fine’ rather than a fair fee based on handyman callout fees.
Am I correct in saying that? Does anyone have better information to add?
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I don’t have a problem with it. They charge it and require you to agree to pay if they send a tech to the premises and the fault is inside the home. They do not make the charge if the fault is external to the home. Had many problems, more than my share of techs attend, and never once was it ‘inside my house’. What a surprise was that with our quality infrastructure? 
BTW, have you checked on callouts for sparkies, plumbers, or any skilled trade lately?
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I linked an article that talked about the average handyman callout fees being around 1-1.5 hours of labour usually since I haven’t had to call one recently. $120 sounds like a lot based on that.
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Excepting these are not ‘handymen’, they are skilled tradies. Two times ago the Telstra tech assigned to fix my line spent ~6 hours tracing wires and switches, then when testing it found the outgoing line worked but the incoming was no longer assigned to my number; it took him another 2 hours to work out how that happened and fix it. He was good at his job. Turned out to be a combination of bad record keeping combined with a tech ‘stealing’ my line that was supposed to be a spare but wasn’t.
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