Wednesday, August 27, 2008

How long does it take Telstra to clean a phone box?

I spotted this vandalised phone box back in July.  I went through the rigmarole of reporting it to Telstra, and was given reference number 128869378 and told that it would be cleaned within 48 hours.


From Telstra

Here it is again on 26 August - 6 weeks later.  Looks like someone has blown their 48 hour service level agreement on getting it cleaned.



Just for interest, this is how this phone box looked when the Google Earth street view people went past and took a photo.  I have no idea when they took it, but I presume it was prior to me going past in July.



Now consider this - people pay for phone calls in these phone boxes by inserting coins into a pay phone.  Over time, the coin box on the phone fills up, and someone (usually a contractor) turns up to empty the coin box.  I have no idea how often that happens, but let's say it's at least once a fortnight.

This is all part of my usual gripe that assets like this are serviced or visited on a regular basis, but the people doing the visiting never seem to notice the graffiti; if they do, they don't seem to be bothering to report it.

These same people probably knock off work at the end of the day, go home and when they get to their own suburb, drive around going, "Look at all this horrible graffiti all over the place".  Somehow, there is a major disconnect in their brains between their duty to report graffiti and their frustration and annoyance as a private citizen.

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