Planhacker: Phone Company & ISP Support Options

When your phone service plays up or your Internet connection is broken, you want help fast, Telstra has just started offering 24-hour support options online via Twitter and Facebook, but what other choices are available from Australia’s main providers? Planhacker rounds up what’s on offer for individual customers.

Picture by Adria Richards

This list is definitely inspired by the list of phone company social media contacts which Danny put together over at Gizmodo. We’ve expanded on his work by adding more companies, by listing links to phone and email contacts as well as Twitter and Facebook, and noting the available hours for each where appropriate. We’ve also included links to the relevant Whirlpool forums; many of these have official company reps monitoring them, and even the ones that don’t are an excellent source of advice.

Phone numbers often vary depending on whether you’re calling about landline, mobile or Internet issues, but in practice often end up in the same call centre regardless. Large phone company support often runs 24/7, but the same isn’t true across ISPs. That said, ISPs are much more likely to offer an estimated call waiting time on their site. We haven’t specified hours where the site doesn’t. We haven’t listed Twitter or Facebook accounts that don’t handle support issues.

As I’ve pointed out before, just because a company offers non-phone support options doesn’t necessarily mean that your problems can be resolved using that mechanism. For more complex options, you’ll almost inevitably end up either hanging on the phone or waiting for a callback (I’ve got an issue with Telstra that’s six days old with no signs of resolution pending).

Times in the list below are Australian Eastern Standard (sorry SA, NT and WA, but that’s where the population mostly is and that’s largely how the hours are set).

3

Phone: 133 320 (24/7)
Twitter (Mon-Fri 8am-4.30pm)
Facebook (Mon-Fri 8am-4.30pm)
Email

Amaysim

Phone: 1300 808 300 (Mon-Fri 8am-9pm; Sat-Sun 10am-6pm)
Facebook
Email

Boost Mobile

Phone: 1300 555 002

Crazy John’s

Phone: 13 22 99
Twitter (Mon-Fri 9am-5pm)

Exetel

Phone: 1300 788 141 (8.30am-11pm Mon-Sun)
Email
Whirlpool

Internode

Phone: 1300 788 233
Twitter
Facebook
Email
Whirlpool

iiNet

Phone: 13 22 58 (24/7)
Twitter (hours)
Email (hours)
Whirlpool

iPrimus

Phone: 1300 854 485 (Mon-Fri 8.30am-9pm; Sat-Sun 9am-5pm)
Twitter
Email (hours)
Whirlpool

Optus

Phone: Listed here (24/7)
Twitter (Mon-Fri 9am-8pm; Sat 9am-5pm)
Facebook (Mon-Fri 9am-8pm; Sat 9am-5pm)
Email
Whirlpool

Telstra

Phone: Listed here (24/7)
Twitter (24/7)
Facebook (24/7)
Email
Whirlpool

TPG

Phone: 13 14 23 (Mon-Fri 9am-9pm; Sat-Sun 9am-6pm)
Email (hours)
Whirlpool

Virgin Mobile

Phone: 1300 555 100 (7am-11pm Mon-Sun)
Twitter (no time specified)
Email (hours)

Vodafone

Phone: Listed here (24/7)
Twitter (Mon-Fri 8am-12am; Sat-Sun 9am-5.30pm)
Facebook (Mon-Fri 8am-12am; Sat-Sun 9am-5.30pm)

Additions and suggestions for this list? Tell us in the comments.

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