ACCC must investigate T. Rex

Why is that? Well you might ask.

But of course the august institution has already decided it's not worth their while, and informed me accordingly.

Excuse me: my arguments remain valid! And I'll reply telling you to have another look at them...

So far, so bad.

I've been keeping my head down in the past month (November 1018) or so while fighting our dominant carrier Telstra via the TIO (Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman). I kept mum during the time a special Telstra negotiator arranged a deal with me, silent apart from tweeting #telstramustbepublic and trying to enlist our former PM Malcolm Turnbull to please consider the case for such a quest...

I had argued that Telstra was using suspect tactics to 'co-opt' dotards like me into retroactive bundle contracts and its board should therefore be required to investigate: how much do/did board members know of such practices, and would they now ensure such practices were stopped?

My silence was bought cheaply, I regret to say. Let principles be bygones...

Today I received my amended final bill from Telstra, and paid instantly. But the bill threw up a new angle by referring to a 2-year bundle we had purportedly signed up for. Now, the T. negotiator is quite correct in stating that the 2 mobile services that were cancelled were in fact BYO handset contracts, on a month-to-month contract. Why then does the final invoice refer to a fictitious 2-year 'bundle'? Unless it should read 'bungle' - as the description of the initial one-off mistake that led to the TIO intervention?

We were never advised of any 'bundle' when we sat down in the Forster 2428 mytshop with a charming 'consultant' and her surly superior... The fact that we bought our mobiles at the mytshop and paid by credit card to a semi-mythical Samsach Services Pty Ltd did not suddenly make them into part of a bundle?

The question was thrown into sharp focus when on the advice of the negotiator I called a Telstra Free-call number and discussed unlocking the handsets in question so we could use them with other carriers. Sorry, said the friendly T. lady, that will be $80 for each to unlock, because they were bought only recently. If you'll wait half a year, it will be $25. After a year, they'll be unlocked for free...

Ah well, Bianca still has her trusty old Garmin-Asus nuvifone with an emergency SIM card from Optus, while I am using the LG K8 she bought me the other day.

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UPDATE 14/03/2019
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I stuffed up the Garmin by inserting one rival operator SIM card too many, so today Bianca was left without her 'life-line'connection to her partner and constant companion.

So I went to Telstra's mtshop in the Forster Shopping Complex once again to have them unlock my LG K8 mobile, bought in mid-October at the same now strangely deserted shop.

Three or four çonsultants' had a try at unlocking the handset, until the last one managed to remove the Telstra SIM, put in the rival Optus SIM and somehow tricked the mobile into accepting the new operator, posting "Ünlock Success" across its screen...

Wish it were so! The mobile still identifies itself with an obnoxious Telstra start-up tone, carries the entire Telstra litany of tired promos and websites and cannot be told to shut up and behave...

To cut a long story short: I have ordered an LG K10 mobile from a Chinese  supplier, at $A171 plus an extortionate $A50+ for courier delivery to our bush burgh - anything to finally get rid of anything Telstraesque! (Not so fast, mate: EGlobal has since advised me that it has ceased operations in Australia and will NOT deliver ordered mobiles to Oz!)

BUT the issue remains for the Telecommunications Ombudsman and/or the ACCC to solve:

Should not all carriers be required by law to relinquish their hold an a customer, past or present, once the customer has decided to opt for the competition?

Over to you, Ombudsman!

Postscript: I have since submitted a complaint re lacking competition to the ACCC...