Service bungle sours experience with NBN

A MANOORA resident wants to warn neighbours about possible NBN issues after waiting six weeks to have his connection problems resolved.

Albert Jindra received a text message from his internet provider TPG on August 10 advising his Macilwraith St property was ready to be connected to the NBN.

A week later a technician arrived to finalise the connection but according to TPG, and unbeknown to Mr Jindra, he could not complete the task and mistakenly marked a work form as “completed”, leaving the household with no phone or internet services.

The software engineer and web developer said he had to cut back on work because the prepaid wireless connection he was forced to buy to compensate did not carry the bandwidth he needed.

Two more scheduled visits by NBN representatives did not fix the problem and, in one instance, Mr Jindra’s wife Rosie stayed home for five hours waiting for a technician who never arrived.

But yesterday, after being contacted by the Cairns Post, TPG confirmed an error had been discovered and prioritised Mr Jindra’s connection.

“Besides my personal troubles, this situation could happen to other people and, instead of so-called super-fast NBN, they could end up with nothing and without an option to fall back on,” Mr Jindra said. “I don’t understand why it’s so difficult for internet providers to check the status of NBN and why NBN doesn’t allow for customers to roll back to previous connections in these cases.

“I know many people in our complex who rely on just a landline phone and disconnection would create a huge impact on their lives and health.”

A TPG spokeswoman said the mistake was only realised yesterday.

“We’re escalating this up as high as we can go,” she said.

“This isn’t the experience we like for customers ... we feel responsible.”

The spokeswoman said TPG would reimburse Mr Jindra for the weeks he was billed but unable to access the NBN.

NBN did not respond before deadline to a request to confirm the company was at fault but an NBN spokeswoman apologised on the company’s behalf.

“With the NBN currently connecting around 40,000 premises each week, there are a small number of premises that require extra work,” she said.

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Picture: BRENDAN RADKE WORK AFFECTED: (From left), Albert Jindra Junior, Albert Jindra and Rosie Jindra have been trying to get the NBN up and running at their Manoora property for six weeks, and are still awaiting action from either their internet service provider or the...