COMMENT: They may be Australia’s largest ISP but one has to seriously question BigPond’s systems and their commitment to customer service. After signing up for their so called fast BigPond Extreme service I found that what they promise and what one gets is a million kilometres away from a “good” customer experience.

The first mistake I made was nominating to do a self install of a cable modem, while the modem was easy to install my problems started when I loaded the software and tried to get connected.

After five attempts and five failures I finally gave up and went to the manual to find a support number, there was none. However they did recommend that one goes to the BigPond web site to get help.

Obviously the dummies in BigPond who wrote this manual were working on the basis that one actually had an Internet connection up and running.

So finally after finding a BipPond support number in an old print version of the white pages and after waiting 15 minutes  I finally got through to a technician who after another 10 minutes of having me fiddle around with cables and the switching on and off of the modem declared that there was a problem with the cable installation to the property and that I had to be put through to another department who would organise a technician to come out.

This is despite the fact that the cable install was brand new and that two Foxtel services were running perfectly well on the cable network. 

Easy, I thought, a simply tech booking.  How wrong I was.

When I finally got through to activations to book a technician I was told that the total order would have to be cancelled as I had made the mistake of booking a self install and that to get any form of help a new order would have to be created so that a technician could be called out.

Why I queried can you not book a simple support call.

I was then told that it was because of the way that the BigPond support system had been set up and that “If I wanted any help” I had to wait while a brand new order was created.

Then came the pain, a 45 minute wait of which 35 minutes, was spent listening to sterile BigPond music, as a new BigPond order was created.

When I again queried the operator who by this time was getting utterly pissed off at my sniping with comments such as “Why it is that BigPond puts customer service second and their internal systems first?” he said “You can take it or leave it”.

So after a total of 75 minutes on a support call I am right now without a cable modem connection and I do have to wait till next week to get a house call from a technician.

However  I have witnessed firsthand what hundreds of BigPond customers have complained about in the past. “Shocking service and Bigpond’s so called multimillion dollar systems, which they keep telling journalists has been developed to deliver a better customer experience”. Really!

If you have a BigPond Customer experience you want to tell me about send me an email at dwr@4squaremedia.com