After a 50-minute phone call to Optus technical support yesterday, my enquiry was answered in 140 characters or less by the Optus Social Media team.

This is the sad tale of an Optus support call. I’m kicking myself I didn’t record it, because you just can’t invent this stuff. It’s so absolutely absurd that no-one, except those who’ve had the misfortune of ringing Optus for technical support, will believe you.

The problem was quite simple: a customer couldn’t send email. Outlook had just “stopped working”. Receiving email was fine, but sending email was not. The customer is connected to the internet with an Optus cable modem, and uses the Optus mail server and DNS server. This was the error being displayed in Microsoft Outlook when he tried to send a message:

All other internet services were working fine. I stopped and started Outlook, checked the account settings and checked the internet connection. All looked OK.

I could ping the Optus mail server, so I tried to telnet into port 25. (‘Ping’ and ‘telnet’ are basic network diagnostic and management tools.) The response I got from the Optus mail server was: ESMTP not accepting messages. To the technically-minded, and even the not-so-technically-minded, this means there’s a problem with the mail server. It’s “not accepting messages”. Pretty simple. Not much room for negotiation there, and not much more fault-finding to be done at this end.

I Googled “optus outage information” and found this site which told me there were no current issues with Optus email.

I thought (naively, in hindsight) I should ring Optus and at least alert them to the issue, and find out if I could use a different mail server in the interim. I was actually hoping to hear a canned message, like, “If you’re calling in relation to email difficulties, please be aware we are experiencing problems at the moment with… blah blah blah.” That’s all I wanted: a quick explanation, an expected outage time and a possible remedy.

My call to 1800 780 219 was answered promptly and it was pretty good quality to Mumbai. I provided the customer’s account details, and I explained to the helpdesk operator I was a technical support person, that we had a mutual customer, and it appeared the Optus SMTP server was down. I told him the error I was getting in Outlook, and the error I was getting by connecting via telnet. I asked if maybe there was an alternative mail server I could use, until the problem had been fixed?

At that point the call derailed rather badly. The next fifty minutes consisted of questions and suggestions (and my responses in italics) like the following. These were all interspersed with BEING PUT ON HOLD for up to 5 minutes at a time:

“We’ll try deleting all your mail in Outlook, and restarting Outlook.” “We won’t be deleting any mail today. It’s not a problem with Outlook, or the customer’s email. It’s a problem with your SMTP server.”

“Let’s create a new mail account in Outlook, that should fix the problem.” “It won’t, but I’ll do it anyway if helps to escalate the problem at your end.” Surprisingly, a new mail account with the same settings didn’t fix the problem.

“I will change the password on the customer’s account, let’s try that.” “But SMTP doesn’t need a password, we’re not using SMTP authentication.” (Password changed anyway.)

“You need to delete all your cookies and browser history, that should fix it.” “Ummm no it won’t. But I’ll do it anyway if it progresses your script.” (Done anyway FWIW. No difference.)

He asked if I could try the same test from another mail client, or on another machine on the customer’s network. I didn’t think that would achieve anything either, other than to check DNS resolution on an independent machine, but did it anyway. There was (predictably) no change in the response from Optus’s SMTP server.

I asked if the mail server name I was using was correct. He assured me it was.

I asked if I could email the help desk operator a screen-grab of the error messages. ”No, we don’t have email here.” (“Where are you, are you in Melbourne?” “No, I’m in Mumbai.” “Hmmm we have email in Melbourne, are you sure you don’t have email in Mumbai?”)

I asked if he could ping the mail server from his end. “No, we can’t do that from here.”

I asked if he could telnet into the mail server. “No, we don’t have telnet here.” I asked if he was familiar with telnet, and if he understood the tests I was performing here. He assured me he was, and that he understood. Then he asked me to check settings in Outlook again.

I was pinging the mail server name, and read out the IP address of the mail server. I asked him if the mail server name was resolving to the correct IP address? He said it was.

I asked him if the mail server name resolved to a different IP address on *his* network. He said he didn’t know, and suggested making more changes to Microsoft Outlook.

And then, my favourite, about 40 minutes into the call: “Actually, can I just check that you have access to the internet please?”

After this last question I forced myself to take a deep breath, and appealed (in a calm, steady voice) for the operator to think before the next time he spoke. “Oh, yeah,” he said, “After all the tests we’ve done, I guess you do have internet access.” Yep. Good guess.

The help desk operator steadfastly refused to concede there may have been a network problem. I honestly don’t know how I could have explained the issue any clearer. He seemed to understand what I was saying – there was no language barrier – but he kept repeating he had checked with “the engineers” and there was no issue with the Optus mail server.

I asked if there was a better network outage page I could monitor, in case an issue was discovered and later resolved. He said there was nowhere I could go on the World Wide Web to monitor service disruptions or outages on Optus Internet. I asked him if he was serious, and he laughed.

Eventually I said I’d just have to wait to see if the server came back. I said I’d like to wait on the line to answer a few questions in the automated customer survey at the end of the call. He said, “Okay, thankyou for calling Optus.” Click. Beep beep beep.

Now for the kicker: just as I was explaining the situation to my customer, Optus Social Media replied to a tweet they had seen. (I was tweeting vehemently about this sad and sorry tale whilst on hold). Here is the response from Optus Social Media:

I was speechless, dumbfounded, flabbergasted and a little bit pissed off.

To ask the most obvious of obvious questions, why couldn’t the help desk operator have told me this 50 minutes previously, in the first 90 seconds of my phone call?

Here’s what have I learnt from this experience:

• Social Media and Lazywebs will now be my first port-of-call for any technical support enquiry with Optus;
• I will actively discourage people from becoming Optus internet customers; and
• I will actively encourage existing Optus customers to churn to an ISP that offers better technical support than this.

What the hell would have happened if the customer (not being technically minded) had called Optus Support and followed their instructions? He would have deleted all his email, probably his mail account settings, screwed-up Outlook, and never actually achieved anything. This was not a difficult support call to resolve, from the point-of-view of the customer. There should be mechanisms in place for outage information to be shared across call centres, help lines and web sites. Quite clearly, at Optus, there isn’t.

No-one really cares if ISPs have a service disruption. Unplanned outages are inevitable in the IT industry. But for goodness sake, Optus should be able to manage them a lot better than this. If this is characteristic of the help desk support afforded by the telco, it probably goes some way to explaining news headlines we’ve seen throughout the year, like this and this.

Credit where credit is due, and kudos to the Optus Social Media team for monitoring Twitter and responding appropriately and in a timely fashion.

Unfortunately, after 15 years of providing cable internet to Australian subscribers, the rest of the organisation still has a lot to learn.

awkward moments · customer support · email · fail · help desk · Internet · internet support · mail · mail.optusnet.com.au · Optus · outage · poor customer support · SMTP · social media

Can someone give me a big blunt stick, so I can bash an Optus CEO over the head?

I experienced a roller-coaster ride of emotions when I read this article in Australian IT: emotions like dismay, anger, frustration, a feeling of hopelessness for the future of Australian telecommunciations, as well as rage and then downright apathy.

But not so much apathy that I couldn’t write this blog post.

Optus have admitted that they are intentionally blocking numbers because they don’t have “commercial interconnect agreements” with some carriers.

This harks back to the bad, bad, bad old days.  Consider the following scenario.  I decide to ring a friend on his new mobile. I dial the number on my mobile, press send, get a strange ringtone, and that’s when the fun starts:

“Hello,” says an operator on behalf of my network, “thankyou for calling XYZ Telecomms, how can I help you?”

“Huh? I’m trying to reach 0418 xxx yyy.”

“Oh, I’m sorry sir.  To continue, I’ll have to get a credit card number, or a telecard number, as we don’t have a commercial arrangement with that company.”

“But you have a commercial arrangement with me.  I can’t believe I’m even having this conversation.  Just put the call on my account and connect me.”

“I’m afraid we can’t do that sir.  Calls are charged at 45c/minute to the number you are trying to reach and are not covered by your contract.  Do you have an alternate payment method?”

Grrrrrr. “Okay, my VISA card number is 4564 1234 xxxx xxxx.”

“Thankyou sir, and the card holder’s name? And the expiry date? And the CCV number?”

Arrgghhhhhhh. “Blah blah blah blah BLAH.”

“Thankyou for using XYZ Telecomms sir, connecting you now.”

(Ring ring, ring ring, ring ring.)

(Music on hold – Greensleeves –  Dum dum, dum dum, da-dum dum, dum dum…)

“Thankyou for calling TJF Telekom, this is Cindy, how can I help you?

“Cindy, I just want to talk to my friend on his mobile, the number’s 0418 xxx yyy.”

“Thankyou sir, you’ve reached your friend’s network, but we don’t have an arrangement to receive calls from your network.  If you agree to continue then the call will be billed at 48c/minute plus a 30c flagfall, please hold and I’ll transfer you to our intelligent voice response system which can…”

ARRRGGHGHGHGHHHHH.  I smash my phone into a million pieces, then curl-up in the corner of my study, rocking backwards and forwards, trying to find that elusive “safe place”.

Is this for real?  Surely not, Dr Ron.

This is what used to happen in parts of the United States, calling across carriers (especially mobile-to-mobile or payphone-to-mobile) and probably still does happen in some parts of the world, where telecommunications regulators completely fail to … well … regulate properly.

Here I was, thinking that Australia had moved into the 21st century, where I can pick up any phone and dial any number and speak to anyone I want.  And have my call connected automatically and get billed accordingly.

An Optus spokeswoman said, “Optus does not have a commercial agreement for the interconnect arrangements necessary for [certain classes of] calls, so we cannot continue to support them.”

Huh?!?!

I’m an Optus customer … I’m paying the bill aren’t I ?!?!?

Connect the bloody call!!!

Optus appear to have got the sulks because another company (Mediatel)  was routing local Optus calls internationally using VoIP, and Optus were missing out on the international tariffs.  Well … that’s a very brief synopsis … the details are being nutted-out in the Federal Court at the moment.

At least one customer, according to Australian IT, said he recently cancelled his contract with Optus over the decision, and said, “I’m not going to give my money to a company that arbitrarily thinks it can decide who I can and can’t do business with.”

Hear, hear.  I applaud you, sir.  The only way Optus can be discouraged from treating its customers with this level of contempt is to “vote with our feet”, as they say.

Let’s hope the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman gives Optus’s chain a very firm yank.  We don’t need this type of commercial stupidity in Australia at the expense of a basic, functional telephone network.

corporate stupidity · Federal Court · Mediatel · Optus · PSTN