Exit-tel customers can't even upgrade their plans to stay

More detail has come to Vulture South's attention about second-tier ISP Exetel dumping customers without any explanation whatsoever. After yesterday's report, other customers have come forward to complain that they're not even offered the option to shift their accounts to a higher-price plan. One customer that contacted …

[LaeMing]

No notice for this customer yet.

NBN just put the outside box and fibre on my place a few weeks ago and a work colleague who lives 2 block north of me just got the internals plugged in, so if Exetel do want to terminate me, I am hoping they can hold off for another month or two when I have to switch plans anyway, so switching providers at the same time would not be much additional effort.

My impression has always been that Exetel is primarily focused on business users and they only connect home users (like me) because why-not. If that has become uneconomic for them, then pulling that side-service back would be expected.

What might make connecting home users suddenly uneconomic? Well being informed that they now have to go to the trouble to store 2 years worth of user-activity metadata might. That is, of course, pure speculation.

I have always thought if Exetel wasn't so good for my current needs that TPG might deserve my patronage if only for being the ISP that seems to always be standing up to our governments (all of them!) trying to get their sticky fingers in parts of the 'net they have no business being anywhere near.

[Neoc]

Re: No notice for this customer yet.

Methinks you mean iiNet, not TPG (although the difference may not hold for long).

[LaeMing]

Re: No notice for this customer yet.

I think you may be correct. I am one of those people for whom branding and corporate image slides right over. It is generally a perk, but it does have the occasional down-side - like when I have cause to identify a commercial entity.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am on an Exetel NBN plan, which I am enjoying very much. We are moderate but not heavy bandwidth users but like to be able to have the capacity. I do hope they are not targeting their NBN customers as we were early adopters and so far the service has been excellent. Why Exetel would do this very alienating business model, as many people who are with this provider are now very nervous, is very strange indeed.

[Breen Whitman]

Its Australia. If its anything less than being stabbed in the heart by a stringray, or tortured, murdered and dismembered by one of the many outback serial killers, then its a good day.

[Thorne]

Don't forget mauled by drop bears.......

[Francis Boyle]

Yeah

Don't make me post pictures of my scars.

[Phil Kingston]

“we are told it was a management commercial decision, and they have not told the staff the reason”.

Oxymoron of the day.

[Hazmoid]

Since when have management ever told the workers why they do anything?

It would have been much simpler for them to say that "due to the change in legislation and data requirements, we have decided to reduce the number of clients for which we have to store data, and are aiming at marketing to businesses rather than individuals. Because the individuals being terminated are on a non-fixed term contract, we are exercising our rights to terminate their contracts. As we are becoming a Business only carrier, unfortunately we are unable to offer an alternative data service to these clients."

See I dashed that off in 5 minutes and could have charged $1000s in consultancy fees for that piece of prose. All they need to do then is offer a link to the Whirlpool ISP checker and their work is done :)

[JohnNBN4810]

Exetel used to be great :-(

I've been with Exetel since early 2000's, initially in Melbourne and then up here in Townsville on Naked ADSL. I did not have a home phone for >6 weeks in 2012 when an internal Exetel error meant our house move was mucked up, yet I still had ADSL! Once I got NBN connectivity, I signed up for a Exetel 25/5 NBN FttP service, which delivered ~20 Mbps down and 4.5 Mbps up, but no phone number for ~ 8 weeks. For the last 6 months I have had sub-10Mbps down and a small drop in my upload speed to ~ 4.1 Mbps - a sure sign of inadequate backhaul capacity. We've also had two recent major drop-outs within the Exetel network. I'm bailing when I get to the end of my 12 month contract period and will not recommend locals go with Exetel for their NBN broadband services. I was thinking of going to iiNet, but if they are TPG'd, maybe not.

[bd1235]

I was with Exetel for a couple of years. They were a bit weird. They did not like you to not have a contract. I'm happy to be gone from them.

[TsVk!]

Trying to milk those who do stay with them too.

They tried to put me from a $70 a month package to $108... to provide exactly the same thing.

When I told them to get stuffed and tried to cancel my service they tried to charge me an additional months service at $108 from the day I cancelled. I told them I'd see them in court before I paid the money, and the tune changed.

Good riddance.

Swapped to a small local ISP now, giving me the exact same speeds as I had with Exetel... except when I call them up I speak to the same young Aussie bloke on the phone. Costs me $10 more a month than before. I can live with that.