Whirlpool

What a joke. A friend of mine signed his mum up to Netspace ADSL, including her home phone (about two weeks ago). While waiting for the connection, instead today he discovered that her home phone had been disconnected (he rings her regularly because she is elderly). He rang Netspace to find out what was going on and they wouldn't deal with him because he was not the authorised account holder. He tried to explain a few things:

1) The authorised account holder cannot call because her phone has been disconnected.

2) He was the authorised account holder's son and did the actual online sign-up (on behalf of his mum). He even had a copy of all of the personal info provided when doing the sign-up to verify. THE ACCOUNT IS EVEN LINKED TO HIS CREDIT CARD BECAUSE HE IS PAYING FOR THE SERVICE FOR HIS MUM.

3) His mum is 75 years old and now her home is disconnected. She has no mobile phone, no car and no means to contact Netspace (or anyone else for that matter).

I hope to God she doesn't have any medical problems or an accident while the phone is disconnected.

All my friend wanted to know was when the phone was going to be reconnected (and what the problem was). A simple question really. But no, he "wasn't the authorised account holder"... How does Netspace expect his mum to be able to call to log the fault? Magic? Tin can and a piece of string?

The helpdesk person was stuck in a loop. A drone who could only say "you need to be the authorised account holder". When my friend asked to speak to a manager, they advised that their supervisor had left 8 mins ago... What a pity the first time my friend called, he waited on hold for about 30 mins only to be disconnected.

Of course, Netspace has already managed to charge his credit card. For what service, I'm not really sure..? I know one thing though, it always seems to work out in the favour of the supposed service provider... :( And they rarely have billing problems related to charging others, only in providing their promised service... :(

How can my friend's mum add him to her account (of people authorised to ring Netspace on her behalf) if she does not have a phone? This should be an option at the time of sign-up.

He also rang Telstra but they wouldn't help because the number is no longer a Telstra number.

Talk about human beings screwing each other. You'd think there could be a better system given the 21st century and all.

BTW, the phone has been disconnected now for most of the day... Hope they're not waiting for the authorised account holder to call. Chicken and egg or Catch 22?

Lepid writes...

What a joke. A friend of mine signed his mum up to Netspace ADSL, including her home phone (about two weeks ago). While waiting for the connection, instead today he discovered that her home phone had been disconnected (he rings her regularly because she is elderly). He rang Netspace to find out what was going on and they wouldn't deal with him because he was not the authorised account holder. He tried to explain a few things:

I am a little confused , how can this friend of yours sign up some one else to a internet + phone service and not be the authorised account holder....

(my thoughts: this means i can now sign up my worst enemy to netspace with out them knowing about it... My god that is scarey)

could you get your friend to explain this to us via yourself ?

All my friend wanted to know was when the phone was going to be reconnected (and what the problem was). A simple question really. But no, he "wasn't the authorised account holder"... How does Netspace expect his mum to be able to call to log the fault? Magic? Tin can and a piece of string?

One solution is for you to sms your friend or phone your friend with the suggestion to drive his mum to his place and have lunch or dinner and phone netspace while enjoying a good meal, there he will have quality time with him mum while sorting out the problem, while he is at it have her authorise her son to be a co-authorised account holder

How can my friend's mum add him to her account (of people authorised to ring Netspace on her behalf) if she does not have a phone? This should be an option at the time of sign-up.

you can request this usually in writing or by fax details are on the website

Talk about human beings screwing each other. You'd think there could be a better system given the 21st century and all.

yes there are discussions on this very issue in other threads

BTW, the phone has been disconnected now for most of the day... Hope they're not waiting for the authorised account holder to call. Chicken and egg or Catch 22?

neither its been well documented the egg came first

i guess he is on the phone to his friend now ...

while we are all waiting... i would never advocate any one to sign some one else up to a service whether they know about or not whether they gave permission or not

I still fail to see how this friend could sign someone else up to a bundled account this is freaky whether its a relative or a friend just damn freaky

This is another case of be warned to everyone do not give your personal details like address phone and name out of the web or you may find your phone and internet has been churned to some other provider my GOD this is scarey

If anything i can see this being a major loophole in online signing up of plans, what is to stop anyone doing this ????

and number one never tamper with some one else's phone if a mother / grand mother wants to change her phone then the mother / grandmother should do it her self.. this is irresponsible if health is an issue

my views on bundling phone and internet i disagree on doing such if the phone is working leave it be.

My friend did the sign-up with his mum's knowledge, permission and presence, but using his internet (again because she did not have internet to do herself - another chicken and egg dilemma).

Hope your confusion has been cleared up somewhat.

I'm sure one could sign up their enemy(ies) however unless you know their credit card number, you'd have to use your own. Then when the enemey complains, it would all come back to bite. Not to mention law breaking by accepting terms and conditions when you're not the actual person or don't have their permission.

The lunch/dinner thing is a good idea, except that the travelling distance between them is great. All that effort just to log a fault/find out what problem is/find out estimated time to fix. Surely common sense can provide an easier way.

Do you have a 75 year old parent? At that age, often the child(ren) begin to look after the parent(s). This is one such case and why he organised the sign-up and is paying for it.

The phone being disconnected is causing the whole family considerable stress.

Lepid writes...

My friend did the sign-up with his mum's knowledge, permission and presence, but using his internet (again because she did not have internet to do herself - another chicken and egg dilemma).

i hope your friend had written permission and not just verbal, if this is the case then your friend should be the authorized account holder unless he did not put the phone / internet in his name if not that was silly.. it would be far simpler to have the phone and internet in your friends name and not his mothers. if written permission has been given he will need to fax or write a letter to netspace with a copy of the letter

yes thanks my confusion is now cleared up, however my concerns over this being a loophole is still scarey though

The lunch/dinner thing is a good idea, except that the traveling distance between them is great. All that effort just to log a fault/find out what problem is/find out estimated time to fix. Surely common sense can provide an easier way.

netspace does not personally know your friend nor his mother so they have privacy rules that govern them , so they are only doing what they have to, if your friend had just put everything is his name then this would have been dealt with by him and not be in this mess he is in now

Do you have a 75 year old parent? At that age, often the child(ren) begin to look after the parent(s). This is one such case and why he organized the sign-up and is paying for it.

yes I do and they handle their own phone and internet plans by them selves but often ask me for advise

The phone being disconnected is causing the whole family considerable stress.

i am sure this is the case, had your friend handled it better this would not have happened

Kjaere writes...

i guess he is on the phone to his friend now ...

You're assuming I'm male.

Lepid writes...

You're assuming I'm male.

my apologies and your correct i did assume wrong, your a female.

sorry about that..

still scarey this whole mess is , thank god my personal details are not on the web for some one to hijack my phone and internet

All my friend did was faciliate - the internet for the online sign-up form, help with the form fields and a printer to print everything out. Saying "my friend" did the sign-up is my way of telling the story because I do not know the mother.

You're missing the point altogether. It's about the irony of the "authorised account holder" not being able to call because Netspace have disconnected the phone...

Your parents sound like they are tech savvy (or quasi tech savvy at least), which is great. Not all elderly people are.

Kjaere writes...

often ask me for advise

I think you mean advice.

Lepid writes...

You're missing the point altogether. It's about the irony of the "authorised account holder" not being able to call because Netspace have disconnected the phone...

your missing the point i fail to see how if your friend signed up some else up to the service how that friend is not the authorised account holder and because he isnt then worse still this example shows that any one anywhere can do this just by knowing a few details... doesnt that scare you ??

Lepid writes...

I think you mean advice.

i did. now stop poking fun at the whirlpool spell checker

Lepid writes...

I think you mean "you're".

again whirlpool spell checker

once again get your friend to get his mum to his place for some quality time and phone netspace to clear it up. otherwise if the friend has written permission from the mother get him to fax these details to netspace pronto

or he can visit them in camberwell and speak to some one at the front desk and hand deliver the written permission

As "the friend" I thank you all for your comments and look forward to establishing and detailing why my mother is without a phone/life line for more than 12 hours overnight. Unfortunately Netscapes promise of contacting them until 10 pm is not matched by the phone service which informs me at 8:30 pm that I am outside their service hours!!

No Kjaere, YOU are missing the point. I will spell it out for you one last time... Person A and Person B are together. Person A is elderly and is not tech savvy. However Person A has expressed an interest to get on the internet. When Person A is at Person B's house, Person B uses his internet to help Person A go through the sign-up process with Netspace. In this case, Person A is the elderly mother and Person B is the son. The son cannot do the application in his name because it's not his application - it's his mother's application, including her address and her phone number. But the son is allowed to help the mum with the sign-up and the mum is allowed to do the sign-up from her son's house. End of point.

Person A's phone then gets cut off and Person B tries to find out what is wrong. Of course, Netspace are not expected to know that Person B is the son or that he was involved in the sign-up process. Of course Netspace is simply following Privacy protocols. But this was the reason for my post: to vent frustration due to a lack of common sense (ie, the helpdesk drone simply repeating over and over, "you need to be the authorised account holder"); to comment on the irony that an authorised account holder cannot quickly or easily call Netspace to log the fault of their phone not working if their phone is not working; and to suggest that alternative account reps should be able to be nominated at the time of sign-up.

Stop crapping on about written permission and someone signing up for someone else and needing written permission. This is NOT the CASE and NOT the POINT. I don't know my friend's mum, so I started the story by saying "my friend did a sign up for his mum but..." I should have just said "I know a person who signed up but...” Golly gosh, is this why you have posts in the thousands? Because you go off on a tangent and crap on about absolutely nothing and/or irrelevant points?

And why do you keep crapping on about written permission? Are you legally trained or educated? Because if so, your grammar and sentence structure do not reflect so.

And stop blaming your poor grammar on the Whirlpool spell-checker. A spell-checker is exactly that - it checks SPELLING not a GRAMMAR.

Lepid writes...

End of point.

each time you post more info comes out, i am glad the fuller account of things is finally coming out

But this was the reason for my post: to vent frustration due to a lack of common sense (ie, the helpdesk drone simply repeating over and over, "you need to be the authorised account holder")

I agree there, and there should be a place whereby a second person can be added as a authorised person on signups. no question there is merit in such a suggestion.. also your friend could have phoned up after doing the online form/signup and spoke to a staffer to find out a method to have his name added to the authorised person, most isps have provision for this as do telcos.

is this why you have posts in the thousands?

now we are getting pedantic, you will also note i have been on here far longer then you have, if you look around there are some who have been on whirlpool for a lot less time then me who has a lot more posts then I do. You are not being very helpful here are you ?

Because if so, your grammar and sentence structure do not reflect so.

I believe you should just give up on these points .. another petty arguement that has nothing to do with your friends problem, we can pick straws or we can keep the discussion on track, and eventually help resolve it, i could call you names too or pick on things but this isnt the place for that, this is the broadband users forum where people help each other

all i did was ask questions...they way that you started the issue, I was a bit freaked out and with good reason, i am not the enemy here just another user just like you... I also offered some solutions so as to remedy the problem.. you may be frustrated by the events of the friend had experienced, but would it not have been easier for you to tell the friend to get online to whirlpool himself ? to save you being frustrated

geecee writes...

As "the friend" I thank you all for your comments and look forward to establishing and detailing why my mother is without a phone/life line for more than 12 hours overnight. Unfortunately Netscapes promise of contacting them until 10 pm is not matched by the phone service which informs me at 8:30 pm that I am outside their service hours!!

i feel for you. i would rarely if ever advise changing phone carriers if it works then leave it be, it has been noted that some people are getting less then what they pay for when bundling internet and telephony services.

In the case of a senior aged person more so to leave the phone system alone and just add internet, cases like this appear to be more frequent

in regards to contacting netspace as far as i know only technical issues can be called in until approx 10 pm , accounts and cust services finish earlier, clearly your issue is technical and so you should choose technical assistance ... i stand corrected as a user if i am in error

Don't aware about Kjaere he's just the negative nancy who has the answer to all the problems with Netspace.

I've had the same problems myself as well as with my relatives because of generation/technofluency gap. Can't agree more even though it's a privacy policy that Netspace operators just love to give "oh I can't discuss any details of this account with you because ...." It's almost like they don't want to deal with you to get on with the next person in the phone queue.

I recently got one of my friends to set their parents up with Bigpond because from previous personal experiences (and thus far now continuing) that their operators have been able to catch on with what the deal is with who they're dealing with.

My partner's parents' relatives (which I have no idea why I recommended netspace to them now) regularly get the same problem when their children can't get to "Internet Explorer". "Can we just speak with Mrs. X" usually ends in tears because they really can't speak English, their children don't even know how to setup the modem to connect to the internet and then ends up as a really drawn out event from long distance with myself trying to tell their children what to do.

Hi all

Having dealt with netspace support in the past on bhelaf of my father, and having worked as a computer tech in schools, i am in many ways glad to hear that netspace is asking for the authorised account holder.

As it happens i got my father to give me permission to deal with netspace on technical matters, due to his personal time constraints (work etc), it is telstras rules governing what can and cant be done with a phone line, without the authorised account holder/authorised phone line owner (and ive helped teachers deal with a situation with big pond, where the line owner and the adsl account holder were different people, (that gets messy)).

If netspace were to let anyone make requests i could grab any netspace user name, call netspace and say, god knows what to them, and the outcome could be very bad indeed.

The only real solution to this is to deliver a written letter stating that you are authorised to deal with this account as a proxy, or to arrange a time for both of you to be around a phone to talk to support staff.

That all said the situation is not a good one, but you will probably find that even if her phone line was with telstra, if it broke telstra would ask to speak to the authorised account holder,
(been there done that, was in the times before adsl, where the pipe holding our phone line cracked somewhere up our street and our phone line drank water and became unhappy, dial up at 7400bps, and not even that was stable)

Hope it all gets resolved soon though

Jay writes...

I've had the same problems myself as well as with my relatives because of generation/technofluency gap. Can't agree more even though it's a privacy policy that Netspace operators just love to give "oh I can't discuss any details of this account with you because ...." It's almost like they don't want to deal with you to get on with the next person in the phone queue.

So you would prefer your account details are discussed with anyone who gets the first part of your email and rings up?

Imagine if you had a situation where someone was trying to find out your address or something.

It's the privacy act. All companies must follow it. Deal with it.

ICEcold writes...

So you would prefer your account details are discussed with anyone who gets the first part of your email and rings up?

Imagine if you had a situation where someone was trying to find out your address or something.

I think it's pretty obvious when someone's trying to get the address or any other details that they haven't confirmed knowing already themselves that they should have no rights to them anyway.

However if as the OP's friend can recite them all backwards. How are they validating the account holder any more than someone who's pretending to be the account holder other than by them knowing those details already?

Nashy writes...

It's the privacy act. All companies must follow it. Deal with it.

exactly,

netspace have in place a method for people to add others as "authorised" others have done it. the OP and the friend have the info needed to now deal with it.

Lepid writes...

Overall, I was venting and hoping that someone from Netspace might help or learn from this.

well you vented ,netspace reps did not answer you, others have and you have the answers.

as for alarmist the way you posted the initial post that is how i saw it so its obvious your initial post was not all that clear. The last thing i want to see happen is that some one else with just a few details do things without my permission.. I for one congratulate netspace following privacy protocol.

you were given methods to address this issue. I also acknowledged you were right with the suggestion that the website should give a opportunity to give a second person authority to deal with the account if neccessary.

as for telstra i was a telstra user initially years ago and left telstra after many months of research and discussion here to find a better alternative and went through all the bullshit on trying to get pro rata refunds etc

and as far as my comment your friend could have handled it better, i stand by it. here an example of a older person possibly with health issues who is dependent on the home phone in case of emergencies and the friend decides (with the older person) for what ever reason to bundle with netspace or any other company for that matter to only find the home phone is gone ,disconnected. Neither able to contact the internet/telephony provider, one because they are not authorised and the other authorised but no phone and living quite a distance apart as well, how smart is that. maybe you should have arranged it rather then the friend

the better alternative would be to have dicussions with the phone/internet provider to ensure its a smooth transition with contact details provided by both the target person and someone who can discuss it as the authorised and have dates and times arranged so that both are available to ensure the service works. Whereby people who are elderly and or have health issues companies will be open to discussion to ensure the experience is good and smooth, and if they are not choose another company

you simply can not be that irresponsible when it comes to the elderly .

Jay writes...

Don't aware about Kjaere he's just the negative nancy who has the answer to all the problems with Netspace.

not correct, there have been many issues i have no answers for but was interested to find out why so on behalf of other users i have phoned netspace to get the answers. but granted there is always an answer for any issue. sometimes you have to dig out out .. churn or visit the tio

Lepid writes...

A friend of mine signed his mum up to Netspace ADSL, including her home phone (about two weeks ago). While waiting for the connection, instead today he discovered that her home phone had been disconnected

Hi Lepid,

A note on this: I've moved a DSL connection with Netspace three times . Every time I moved my Netspace account my phone was out of service. One time it was for the better part of a week.

On the third time I confirmed that the solution is to call (if you can, you can also go to the shopfront - good luck with that as they'll just call their call centre and hand the phone to you..) Telstra and advise them that the line is out. They will then connect (reconnect?) it. This is what happened on the 2nd and 3rd times for me. Watch out they don't try to charge you for it. They disconnected it, they must reconnect it - as soon as possible.

I'm still not sure why it is necessary for Telstra to disconnect a phone for a DSL connection, but I do know that they must have it reconnected ASAP. You can also advise them that there is a need for it to be done quickly - eg, for the sick or elderly.