Don't mess with Belmont North's Eunice English.
Eunice may be dealing with impaired vision and Parkinson's, but she's not about to accept shoddy customer service from a telco.
She's Scottish and a retired journalist, so she was never going to let a corporation get one over her. Besides, does a journalist ever really retire? Once a journo always a journo.
"They may take away our lives, but they'll never take our freedom," we can hear Eunice howling in the spirit of warrior William Wallace in Braveheart.
Her problem, you see, was trying to get Telstra to fix her faulty Samsung Galaxy A5 tablet, which was refusing to charge.
After a few days of documented texting, jumping through hoops, having tests done remotely and basically being stuffed around, she pulled out her ace card.
"I wanted them to fix it like they did in the good old days," she said.
"I have spent literally thousands with Telstra, going back long before it was Telstra."
She stuck with Telstra on the "better the devil you know" principle.
"They owe me big time," she quipped.
Last year, after trying for three months to get a free phone that Telstra promised her and tearing her hair out dealing with an overseas call centre, she received an apology from Telstra CEO Andrew Penn via email.
Back then, she told Andrew: "I speak as a loyal, but disillusioned customer who has been with you since the days of BigPond and beyond. My god Andrew, I go back to before the internet! I could have bought a Ferrari with my bills."
Seeing she had Andrew's email address, she decided to drop him a line about her tablet trouble. Last time, he signed the email with "Yours sincerely, Andy".
So she understandably began her email with the greeting: "Hello Andy".
She went on to raise concerns about Telstra's app being used to "distance us from an actual person with the power or intent to actually make change".
She said this would not "alleviate the seething groundswell of resentment we customers/clients feel every time we try to get something fixed".
"Round and round we go, texting someone who has no power to actually fix or replace - in my case - a faulty tablet that is threatening to electrocute me," she said.
"Trying over three days to simply get it replaced has, as it does to so many, made me physically ill," she said.
Andy responded - no doubt with a stock and standard email - by saying: "Thank you for your email and for bringing the difficulty in connecting with Telstra to resolve the issues with your device to my attention. I apologise that this has been your experience and for the frustration and inconvenience being caused. I will ask a member of my customer service team to contact you to discuss. Yours sincerely, Andy".
The Outcome
Hang on, though, did Eunice get one over Telstra? Or is it the other way round?
In her latest correspondence late on Wednesday evening, Eunice told us: "I came home having ordered the latest bigger and better and expensive Samsung tablet. Good work young salesman at the local Telstra shop. After tinkering with the current tablet and removing lots of detritus from around the pins, it is obvious I need to go bigger and better. And why not, since my life revolves around it?
"Now I'm waiting for it to arrive for collection. So that makes it a win-win situation ... doesn't it? Or is that a draw?"
