🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi,

    The content of this mail contains information related to my poor
experience with my existing telephony and internet services provider.  If
you are familiar with the the general telephony/internet services offered in
Melbourne/Australia, the rules and legislation imposed on the providers or
the rights of a consumer/subscriber etc, do spare me a few mins to read
through my mail as your feedback is important to me!  Thanks!

    I'm a resident from College Square, a student apartment complex located
in Carlton, Victoria where all the telephony and data lines are monopolised
by a small company named MultiTel Communications Pty Ltd (ACN 085 968 716).
The reason I classify them as small is because I've been consistently
dealing with only 2 person.  1 regarding registrations and payments.  The
other regarding technical complaints.  All the contact numbers provided are
never answered and I've never fail to end up leaving a voicemail regardless
if it's office hours or not.

    MultiTel charges the residents at $16/21 (1BR/2BR apartment) per mth for
the telephony services which I supposed should be higher than anyone who is
on Telstra, Primus, Optus etc rite? The reason they gave for the higher
pricing scheme is because that they are providing us with additional
services such as call-waiting services and also we can have free internal
calls to the reception and also to other apartments.  As for why do one have
to pay more for line-sharing, their reason was that there will be a higher
usage and service charge incurred on their part.

    Can anyone imagine if the phone is always engaged regardless of
outgoing/incoming calls during peak hours (8PM to 12MN)?  And you gotta end
up paying 40cts making phone calls off the public phones despite the hefty
subscription fee that u r paying monthly? I can tell you, we went through
that for weeks.  Good thing that they offered to waive the subsequent
month's subscription fee as a form of compensation and promised to resolve
the problems within the same week.  Even thou the problem did persist for
another week or 2 before completely resolved, at least I can finally make a
phone call at 9PM now without the fear of getting an engage tone.

    For the internet services, they are charging the residents at $40/mth
for unlimited access with a download limit of 80MB/mth.  Excessive downloads
are charged separately at approx $0.30/MB.  As they've got separate data
points installed in every apartments, dialling up to the internet is made
via the data points and users need not incurred additional phone cost.  But
even if my calls charges are included in the $40, I am still paying ard
$2/MB and I personally find that ridiculously expensive as the modems are
physically located within the building and dial-up is not required!  By the
way, there were no Starter-Kit given to the subscribers as they feel that
these software available everywhere from PC Magazines etc. and off the net
if the users need them.

    Worst of all, they had this firewall setup which blocked the users from
all kinds of internet services such as IRC, ICQ, Video/Radio live network n
etc.  Subscribers are not provided with any email address not to mention a
web server to host homepages.  All we got was just a smtp server for sending
out emails that's all.  There was no newserver and the only online services
that they provide is for the subscribers to check their online usage.  You
can take a look at how pathetic the webpages looked at
http://www.collegesquare.com.au/local/ if you want to.  There are also
several ocassions where the servers are down for hrs (as long as 24hrs) and
they didn't even bother to apologise or explain for it!

    After months of complaints, they've finally enabled ICQ and started
running a news server for their subscribers (other internet services are
still unavailable).  Even then, I have decided to source for a new ISP to
accommodate my net usage.  However, signing up with another ISP apparently
didn't solve my problems.  The internet connection that I am getting now via
the telephone point from my apartment allows me to only connect up to a max.
of 28800bps on my Xircom 56K V.90 PCMCIA modem.  After experimenting with a
few other modems and dialing into my new ISP from other locations... I
concluded that there must be something that is limiting the data
capabilities of the telephone point but not the data points.

    Just wondering if anyone can advise if limiting of data capabilities is
possible if the are monopolised?  Also, I've checked with both the
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and the
Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (TIO) to realise that they are neither
registered as an ISP nor a carrier?  Can anyone offer internet services and
call themselves an ISP without obtaining any form of license n etc if they
want to? Also, can somebody please tell me what's my rights and where can I
address these problems to.  For your info, this building is managed by YMCA,
and they were the ones who granted MultiTel the contract.

    To all who read till this point of the mail.  Your advices and feeback
will be deeply appreciated.  Thanks again!