An Armadale hairdresser has claimed her Jull Street business was going through a hard time following a stuff-up connecting her to the National Broadband Network that could leave her without a working phone for up to four weeks.
Room for Hair owner Michelle Mann organises most of her appointments through the business landline but on August 10 a routine service switchover to new fibre optic NBN wires went awry and she has been told the phone could be knocked out for a month.
An iiNet customer Ms Mann said she felt like she was being misled when she began trying to seek help from the service provider.
“I received a couple of different stories,” she said.
“I was told it was going to be another 15 days and originally I was told my number was in quarantine for three or four days, then I was told it hadn’t been quarantined.”
Quarantining is a process which phone service providers go through to ensure numbers are left for a period of up to 12 months before they are reassigned to a new customer but Ms Mann said she was promised her business phone number would not change.
Since the cut-off she has been unable to make or receive calls, which she said had seriously impacted on her employees’ abilities to schedule appointments.
“About 50 per cent of people organise their appointments through the phone,” she said.
“I’m just a small business owner, I don’t have thousands of dollars behind me and my phone will be off for almost four weeks.”
Ms Mann contacted Member for Burt Matt Keogh who said his office had attempted to contact iiNet and parent company TPG but had not heard back.
“I think it’s a real travesty that this should be an upgrade, this should be giving people better internet and they can’t even deliver a phone service,” he said.
Mr Keogh said he had heard from other residents the NBN rollout had often been problematic and hoped the issues would be resolved.
“The thing that really worries me is we’re hitting these problems at the beginning of the roll-out,” he said.
“It’s only just been made available in this area but in two years everybody has to join the NBN, you won’t get a choice.
“I see it getting worse unless they manage this whole process.”
TPG was contacted for comment but did not reply by deadline.
Until the issue a resolution is made Room for Hair can be contacted on 0455 796 932.
