It's somewhat unbelievable to find I've now been living in Australia for over 7 months. In some ways it feels like only yesterday that I was in the UK; in others, it feels like I've been here for a lifetime! I certainly feel like I've barely stopped since I arrived and am still trying to sort out some of the basic stuff because I haven't had time to get it done!
I've taken to attempting to knock off one item on my list every week in an effort to be methodical and get the most important things done first! Last week it was home insurance. The recent bushfires brought home the importance of getting something sorted sooner rather than later and certainly before the summer arrives given that I live somewhere which could be hit by a bushfire. The type of contents insurance available over here is pretty similar to that in the UK, although you do find some different options - like motor burnout cover for your electrical equipment such as fridges and freezers! I guess that's indicative of the kind of heat they have to work in over here and the strain that is taken by the motors trying to keep things cool. As the fridge-freezer in my apartment belongs to the landlord, that's not something I need to worry about! The main difference in insurance here is the cost - it is astronomical in comparison to the UK! I had cover for £60,000 ($102,000) worth of contents, including accidental damage, cover of £5,000 ($8,500) for items taken out of the home, with £100 ($170) excess and the cost in the UK for a year was around £110 ($187 at current exchange rates of 1.7). Over here, I've got cover for only $60,000 (£35,000), including accidental damage and $3,000 (£1,760) for items taken out of the home, with $450 (£265) excess and the annual cost is $425 (£250)! Insurance costs in Australia in general are high since the collapse of one of their major insurers over here in the early 2000s, so certainly something to bear in mind when budgeting for life downunder.
This week my task was to finally sort out getting broadband in my apartment. The telephone fittings over here (certainly in my apartment) are smaller than I'm used to in the UK, but a friend confirmed they were indeed phone sockets. There are a good few options for broadband with the prices ranging fairly substantially from $60 per month for phone line, unlimited broadband and included calls to over $100 per month for just phone line and 10GB of broadband! I was initially looking at TPG (one of the cheaper options) which I've had good reviews about from friends. However, luckily I'd contacted the letting agent who put me in touch with the previous tenants. They had TPG and found it to be slow and regularly dropping out as the apartment is a long way from the local exchange. They ended up putting in Telstra cable which functioned far better. So that opened up a whole different set of options - or so I thought. In fact, the only additional option it gave me was Telstra cable; if I'd wanted to go with a different cable operator, I would have had to have their cable line put in! How ridiculous... surely one cable connection should be the same as another?! Anyway, it certainly made the decision-making process quicker as the choice was just which Telstra package to go with!
Having decided that 50Gb per month would be plenty, I duly signed up online. They stated that it may be necessary for a technician to visit and gave the opportunity to select 3 different appointment times. As I'd already decided to have a day off on Friday, I asked for either Friday morning, Friday afternoon or Saturday morning. A couple of days later, with everything processed, I received an email to say I would need a technician and that they'd been booked for the following Friday! What on earth is the point of giving your customers a first, second and third choice date and time slot when you completely ignore all of them?! I called their helpline and told them I needed to change the appointment they'd given me. They were vey helpful, but the process was exceptionally long winded! After about 20 minutes of hanging on the phone though, I managed to come away with an appointment on the Friday afternoon that I was off work!
So Friday I was at home between 1-5pm - my allotted slot - and the engineer turned up about 3pm. I'm not sure why he had to come out because all he did was plug in the modem, link up my laptop and registered my service - I could have done all of that myself! Having registered my service, he told me it would take about an hour before it was activated. An hour later I tried to get online, but just got the registration splash screen again. I tried re-registering, but still no luck an hour later! I then called up Telstra who said the activation seemed to have got stuck in the system at their end. They got me to re-register yet again and then said they'd call back in an hour. So at 7.30pm, we ascertained that the activation was still stuck and all they could do was request technical assistance for someone to manually take it through the activation process. I was advised this could take 3-5 working days, so yet another week without my broadband. I hope this isn't going to be the story of buying a service from Telstra! It was Wednesday when I suddenly received a flurry of text messages from Telstra to say 1) my service was now up and running 2) my service would be up and running on Friday (is it just me or are those statements contradictory?!!!) and 3) there was an appointment booked for me this Friday between 8am-12pm to link up my broadband! I think Telstra should certainly win the award for how to confuse your customers!! I phoned up and eventually ascertained that the appointment was an internal one for a Telstra engineer and not that they'd be trying to send someone back out to my apartment. So hopefully that means that by the time I'm back in Sydney at the weekend, I'll be connected... but do watch this space for further developments!!
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