Central West Logistics CEO Rodney Davis is well acquainted with the hold music on Telstra’s internet helpline, because he’s been listening to it since his internet and phone lines fell silent at the Lone Pine Avenue business on Tuesday, April 19.

“I’m at my wit’s end,” he said.

 “I don’t usually jump up and down about things, but this is ridiculous.”

When he discovered he had no internet in his office and warehouse, the first thing he did was go into his home next-door and see if it was working there.

“Everything was working fine there, as it was with all the homes down the road and just across from us, there just wasn’t any at the business,” he said.

What follows will be all too familiar to anybody who has been in these circumstances, phone calls to an off-shore call centre, reassurances that it would be fixed within 48 hours and expensive workarounds.

“Every time we ring it’s the same response that there’s been an outage in the area and it would all be fixed, but there’s no outage in the area, just our business,” Mr Davis said.

To continue operating, Mr Davis says they’re doing all they’re internet communications via a 4G dongle.

“That was their solution to the problem, go buy a 4G dongle, and transfer everything over to it where the data charges are huge,” he said.

Even the most basic of technologies, the fax, has been rendered useless.

“We have two lines into the office, one that runs the internet based phone system and one that was used for the fax and the internet, but since Tuesday, April 19, we’ve had no fax or internet,” he said.

To make matters worse, the internet based phone system is now beginning to fault.

“Where we once had four phone lines, in the past 24 hours only two of those lines have been working,” he said.

A Telstra spokesman apologised for the delay and said a technician would be contacting the business to rectify the problem.

“We wish to apologise for the delays the customer has experienced in having their services repaired,” he said. 

“This is not the experience we want for our customers and we are looking into why this has occurred on this occasion. 

“We will have a technician working with the customer today to restore the services.”

mark.logan@fairfaxmedia.com.au