On 23 August I wrote the following letter to Telstra for reasons that will become apparent:
Dear Sir/Madam,
I have just received a phone bill and once again, for perhaps the fourth or fifth time, there is an overdue amount of $52.80 which was originally for something called 'purchases'.
The first time this happened the amount for 'purchases' was $48. I didn't pay close enough attention to the bill and simply settled the phone account plus the $48 extra. I later realised we had purchased absolutely nothing and had received nothing. When I rang Telstra about this, one of your consultants explained that Telstra was merely the vehicle for this bill and I would need to talk to the billing firm whose name [let's call them Ozone Pty Ltd] and phone number he gave me.
When I rang Ozone and pointed out that neither my wife nor I had ever had any dealings with them, I was told that our mobile numbers would be removed from their files. On the next account, however, $48 had been replaced by $52.80 as 'overdue'.
So I rang them again. The person I spoke to said that Ozone would send me a cheque for $52.80. I didn't believe this but in any case I had to give precedence to coping with a very threatening communication from Telstra about payment 'overdue'. I rang and spoke unsuccessfully to one of your consultants so I asked to speak to a supervisor who assured me that there would be no further reference to the irrepressible 'overdue'.
A couple of weeks later both our phones suddenly ceased to operate. I immediately suspected that the ghost of overdue had come to life again. I rang the Telstra number — the only one on which either of our banned phones would now work — and I was able to establish that we were being punished for not having paid $52.80 still owing! Yet again I managed to fend off the threats temporarily so that our phones were alive once more. Meanwhile, a cheque for $52.80 from Ozone arrived in the mail.
"I presume this sort of demeaning shambles is not what they intend when they say 'It's how we connect'."
You may be familiar with the expression 'Catch-22'. It comes originally from the novel of that name by Joseph Heller: the title passed into and has remained in everyday language because it so accurately caught the popular understanding of being in a