Michael Gorey

There’s a ritual to go through when you move house involving change of address.

Anyone who has done that knows what I mean: Electricity, gas, telephone, etc all need to be contacted.

Australia Post offers a free service but I like to do it myself. Especially moving interstate, there are new providers to deal with, at least for utilities.

I had no problem this morning with electricity. Requesting a final reading in Kalgoorlie and a new account in Mount Gambier went smoothly.

I said to Juliet before I started that Primus (phone/internet) would be the tricky one.

I know from past experience they put people on hold for a long time. Unfortunately so far, I haven’t even got so far to be placed on hold.

After pressing through four multiple choice options the phone disconnects, except once I was told they were experiencing long delays and please call again later!

It’s pretty poor really. They either need to employ more service staff or install a queue system. There’s no excuse for disconnecting a service enquiry.

Sigh. I’ll now try again.

Update: On the fourth attempt I entered a queue at 8.52am. I put the phone down with the speaker on while I browsed the web and waited. The phone was answered 38 minutes later at 9.30am!

Switching address was easy enough, but I was surprised at the reconnection fees for both telephone and internet, something like $50 and $90 respectively.

I was disappointed too that we couldn’t be told our new phone number in advance. We have to call an automated service when we get to Mount Gambier.

Update 2: Cancelling pay TV wasn’t easy. We decided to save the $90 a month it costs. Apparently though, we are contracted until September and have to pay a $160 exit penalty.

I’m pretty sure we had Foxtel connected soon after we arrived in Kalgoorlie, which makes it a 30-month deal, or possibly it’s 24, but you’d think moving interstate is an acceptable reason to break the contract.

Foxtel doesn’t even service Mount Gambier, but they offered to rebate the installation fee if we signed up there with Austar. No thanks.

These articles might be of interest:

• Bigpond billing game
• Telstra’s online ordering
• Internet fax