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Monday, April 23, 2012

My Fiscal Fast Fifth Day



Fiscal Fast Fifth Day.

Day 5 has just ended and I am hooting along only tomorrow to go and as Wedesday is a public holiday I think I can declare this a huge success.
There is still enough food in the fridge freezer and pantry to get me through until after this challenge is over.

I am not sure if I mentioned it in an earlier post but I have sent off the form which hopefully will give me a part British aged pension, the Pension age for females in the UK has been 60 for a large number of years, but it is slowly rising and by 2020 it will be 65, so it has only been this last couple of months since I turned 61 that I became eligible. It will be based on the number of years I worked while living there, I started working when I was 15 and left Scotland when I was 35, but I will not be eligible for the whole 20 years as I took some time off to have my children.
So it may only be a token amount, but as I am too young to claim an Australian pension until I turn 65, every little coming into this house is going to help.
I have been warned that this could take some time to process, so fingers crossed.

Today my Telstra account came in, nothing unusual in this it comes in every month. Only every month it is wrong. This account includes our landline our internet and our pay TV and comes to a hefty $250 a month or around that figure. Way back in December I missed a payment as I was in control of that bill and I just did not have the money. Then in January I left for a couple of months, The Foxx did his best single handed to cope with the debt I left him. But like me he fell behind, then Telstra changed it's bill format and the b****y account got harder to read. In our last three accounts we can find no sign of payments made and our bill just keeps getting higher and higher. We have been frantically trying to get this sorted out but we get put through to call centres where the staff just don't have a clue what we are talking about.
Since I returned home we have been paying Telstra back $200 a fortnight and according to our calculations we have caught up with the arrears, but according to our last account which arrived this morning, we are now around $1,000 in arrears.
Well The Foxx went into battle and although it took him through 10 different departments and well over an hour on the phone he eventually got it sorted out and our $1,000 bill went down to this months payment of $250.00, at last we are back in charge and although we have no idea where it went wrong Telstra have agreed to look into it to make sure it does'nt happen again.

Heading down to the bank tomorrow to take another $100 out of my snowflake jars and deposit it into my savings account, 4 months and only $200 still it's better than nothing.

While I am on the subject of money, my superannuation payment has not hit my bank yet, so that may require another hour long phonecall.....

6 comments:

  1. Great job on the fiscal fast Maureen! Hopefully you'll get the Telstra bill taken care of...sounds like a mini nightmare.

    Our cell phone provider makes all sorts of mistakes in the bill EVERY month. It really gets old.

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  2. The most frustrating part for us was trying to actually get someone to talk to us in a language both parties could understand. With our Scottish accents and their Malaysian accents we had no common ground. Why oh Why are the call centres outside of Australia ????

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  3. Telstra is soooo bad to communicate with. My hubby found out that they assign a a case number and each employee has a number as well - it is worth getting those numbers so when (not if) you have to call back they can research your records.

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  4. Hubby actually got a number of someone in the accounts dept. here in Oz, plus a case number, so we are good for any further phonecalls.
    Apparently on Today Tonight the current account teatime show, Telstra has been getting quite a bashing for mistakes with accounts

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  5. My Telstra is called Rogers and I was going to call them today. I had the phone actually in my hand but didn't make the call. Our home phone/internet/cable TV is now almost $200 a month and I just don't want to pay that much anymore. But I hate calling those places..you get passed from person to person whose accents i can't understand and none of them seem to have the authority to do anything - it's just so frustrating that it makes you want to give up or not even try!
    I'll try again tomorrow...but anyways, good on you for getting caught up! Bit by bit you are decreasing debt and increasing savings. You are on the right path and I'm so proud of you Maureen!

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  6. Thanks Jane, I used to run out of charge on my phone before I even got through to speak to anyone. That was when I realised I needed a new phone LOL

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