Sorry that happened to you thinker. It makes it worse that not only were you an employee but a diddled consumer as well.

A similar thing happened to us a few years ago when we left our car for a service with a large 'reputable' car dealership service centre in Canberra, and returned to find a dent in the RH side front. We were naturally cross and were told by the dealership management that it must have been there when we dropped the car off. We said it seemed odd that we would not have noticed a dent in our car before now. They offered to pay half the cost and had a mate in the industry fix if for a cheaper price than usual.

Having had a baby very recently and living on one income we could not afford to take it through the legal system. I think our share was $230 which was a lot for us in those days (1991 approx) on top of 17% interest rate on our home loan.

That is the sad reality - you have to be rich to be able to afford legal representation or really poor and get legal aid. Even legal aid may not help out in these sorts of cases. We were really cross about it and could not believe the complete lack of integrity and honesty and the only solace is we have bad mouthed that business all over the place through friends and work colleagues. It was a good way to vent but probably only served to make us feel better rather than actually affecting their business bottom line.

Congratulations on finding another job so quickly. Have a happy Christmas.

I’m on some Telstra plan, I downloaded too much and got slowed down.

But it doesn’t just slow you down, some sites will not load at all. I get the plan upgraded and they say it will take effect in a few hours. I wait several hours, never happens.

You ring Telstra people and complain about being completely disabled not just slowed down and that it hasn’t been fixed yet. They put you onto tech support because you need to reconfigure something on your web browser to make sites load at the lower speed in the meantime – nup wrong says tech support go to billing.

I tell billing the story and that some sites that cannot be accessed are sites I pay to be on and that keeping me away could cost me all the money I have paid in the last year to access them. Hey, it’s very true.

Okay says Billing in two minutes you will have your speed back to normal. And yes - one minute later it is.

Merry Xmas Telstra.

Very interesting Jewely and it illustrates the danger of commercial control of the internet.

Billing is the place you go if you want the internet product that your paying for, have no fear you will be billed for it even if your not getting it. And at the flick of a switch at their end you can have it. Amazing isn't it?.

Billing without the need to justify it, is the post Howard way we do things in consumer relationships today and I repeat no one in Govt has the bottle to re-regulate.

For business, the key to success is how much of a commodity do you control?, particularly if it is an essential service.

In the case of Telstra, the ridiculous and questionable sale of profitable public infrastructure has now made the NBN much more expensive to implement, because we have to buy our own property back from it's owners or at the very least get them to co-operate. Negotiating with the owners of the goose that laid the golden egg is now like being Jack without a beanstalk for any future or existing Govt.

If your looking for a reason why fuel pricing seems berserk, why Gas electricity water etc prices are going ballistic look to the Trade Practices Act. It's because they can without any monitoring instrument or justification required.

I think this will get to the point where people will lose their homes because they cant pay their utility, communication and fuel bills. Conversely, wages remain static , job security non-existent, and the consumer /employee will eventually have about as much control over his future as a lemming on rampage.

Your instance and mine Jewely, is just a spit in the ocean.

Hey Thinker, I watched Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story" last night, it nearly had me in tears.

This world is a disaster.

And yeah if Telstra billing can make sites not accessible then all we need to control the internet is make it available only to the wealthy which I guess is the direction everything is heading. Oh and then last night around midnight internet slowed down again, back on the phone… they’d only done a patch of one gig or something (no idea how I used that so quickly) so a few more switches flicked and the new plan got put through straight away.

What I don’t understand about the internet is that it seems like selling property on the moon. Physically am I using more of some service?

Now I am going to go wrap presents I suspect I paid too much for and made rich people a little richer.