[Un]Easytone Communications

Starbucks on Swanston St (between Flinders St. and Collins St.)
Melbourne, Victoria
Australia
42.8° F (6° C)

Easytone Communications
274 Swanston Street
Melbourne, VIC 3000
Australia

I cannot say that I have had much customer satisfaction moments during my two month stay in Melbourne, but this one just takes the cake when it comes to customer dissatisfaction. Allow me to elaborate.

I walk into Easytone Communications on Swanston Street, observing the "Authorized Telstra Dealer" pasted all over the windows. I have been having reception issues with the current Vodafone prepaid card and I want to give Telstra a try. After all, Telstra is the telco giant in Australia. I figured getting on the Telstra network would give me better reception.

I walk in the door, ask for the price, and he tells me 25 dollars. He asks for my picture ID. I hand him my driver's license and my credit card and he hands me a package containing a prepaid SIM card. I am thinking... 'wow. That was easy'

I replace the Vodafone SIM card with the Telstra one. However, Telstra never seemed to come up as one of possible networks; only YES OPTUS and VODAFONE were available. Telstra eventually becomes available after many searches... but when I select it, error message that says "no cell available". I check the manual, and it seems I had to register the SIM card online first. I'm thinking... 'why didn't the salesperson tell me about this?' as I step back into the store to see if I can have the salesperson register for me. I wait patiently for about 15 minutes:

me: I was wondering if you could help me register the SIM card
salesperson: Can you try again in 30 minutes?
me: You mean it takes 30 minutes to activate a prepaid SIM card?
salesperson: I have a lot of customers here
me: ??? (I'm thinking 'what am I?')
salesperson: I have all your information here so I'll register it later.
me: fine (I walked out the store)

I quickly walk over to an internet cafe to register myself. By the time I attempt to register, it had already been registered. I turn the phone on. Same thing. Telstra comes up after a lengthy network search. I select Telestra, and the message says "No cell available."

I walk all the way back to the store to inquire about the problem I was having. After fiddling with my phone for a while, he takes the SIM card from my phone and puts it into another phone. Then he calls one of the other phones in the store and shows me the caller ID.

salesperson: See? It works on our phone.
me: (fuming)
salesperson: U.S. phone's bandwidth does match the bandwidth in Australia.
me: Vodafone SIM card works on my phone.
salesperson: I don't know what to tell you. The card works. Something's wrong with your phone.
me: So... you're telling me that I'm stuck with a 25 dollar SIM card that doesn't work with my phone?
salesperson: Nothing's wrong with our card. It works.
me: Don't you think you should have told me the requirements BEFORE I purchased the card?
salesperson: We never had to do that before.
me: ...

(after few minutes of fuming and silence - I'm fighting my urges to kick the chair and throw the SIM card in their faces)

me: THANKS A LOT.

I walk out the door.

The better way to handle this would have been to:

• Offer refund and use the SIM card for testing future prepaid card customers for the next two months