According to ESI, Telstra Country Wide offered the network integrator a dealership contract when it first recommended the client to the carrier. However, ESI said Telstra formally withdrew its offer after the network consultancy went into bat on its client's behalf by acting as a technical mediator to resolve ongoing difficulties.
ESI described a litany of problems with the client's Web site that began the first day it was relocated to Telstra's hosting service. According to ESI, Telstra failed to load backend SQL software the site required to operate live.
"It was like the bowler turning up at the crease without the ball. They'd actually contracted to take it on board -- the day it meant to go live there was no module loaded," said ESI business development manager Roger Close.
Shortly after, ESI transferred the site to its own Web servers during a 48-hour outage for which its client was given no explanation.
The site was eventually returned to Telstra after three weeks of testing at the customer's request. But the problems continued.
"A few weeks later the site went down again for no apparent reason. The client was advised that their own web developer may have caused the problem, although no proof of access was provided, and [the developer] confirmed he had not accessed the site. Meanwhile, it mysteriously came back up, no-one the wiser," ESI said in statement on Tuesday.
ESI was able to help its client in further consultation with Telstra, but the carrier withdrew plans to enter a partnership with the network integrator and cut them out of further consultations with the client.
Close, formerly with BigPond technical support, is perturbed by the stance the carrier has taken on the matter. He was keen to point out that ESI itself is a customer of Telstra Country Wide service but believes there is a misfit between the carrier's sales-orientated culture and the needs of the SME market.
"Telstra seems to have moved a lot of people across from the mobile phone sector into communications -- that's one of the problems," he said.
According to Close, that's placing a distance between Telstra technical services and its account management functions. He claims that many of ESI's small business customers complain of a drop in service levels after having signed contracts and completing initial technical stages of migrating to Telstra's Web services.
He believes that Telstra's technical support and sales functions should remain tightly integrated throughout the life of the contract.
ZDNet Australia contacted Telstra for comment but the carrier was unable to respond at press time.
Telstra hasn't changed, still arrogant. Can't seem to shake the old Public service culture.
Even after so many years of being a public. or half public company anyway.