Clinic phone dramas

By Jonathon Howard

PROMINENT LOCAL medical practice, Tweed Skin Cancer Clinic on Boyd Street at Tweed Heads, has been plagued by phone issues since February and is asking patients to dial a mobile number (0416 896 231) to book appointments.

Tweed Skin Cancer Clinic has served the Tweed Shire and wider areas for the past three decades and is concerned some patients believe the phones have been disconnected.

Practice manager Andrew Thomas told The Weekly the practice has “unfortunately fallen victim to sudden telecommunication faults”.

“Our provider, Telstra, has been unable to reconnect our phone line and callers from across all providers, including Optus phones, are receiving the message: ‘this number has been disconnected’,” he said.

“This has gone on for four weeks now. Our mobile is currently working and is 0416 896 231, and we are hoping to have our landline (07) 5536 4961 restored for all callers as soon as possible.”

Mr Thomas said the phone issues have come as a blow to the business as the landline remains their direct means of contact with patients.

“It’s a huge blow having it suddenly taken away from you, and your patients are unable to contact you from Optus phones,” he said.

“It gets worse when the service provider you have passes you from one overseas country to the next for help, and you are told time and time again that your complaint has been escalated and you will hear back in a few days.

“When this happens three or four times and nothing has happened on the ground to restore your phone line, then you really start to feel helpless and abandoned by Telstra.”

Telstra regional general manager Mike Marom sought to explain the situation and extended an apology to the clinic.

“In early February the clinic transferred its NBN landline from another provider to Telstra,” Mr Marom said.

“This process, called porting, occurs thousands of times per day between providers and normally the process is seamless.

“Unfortunately, in this case, a programming fault occurred, meaning that while incoming calls from some providers were connected without issue, calls from other providers would not be connected.

“However, there were no impact to any outgoing calls as they worked as normal.”

Mr Marom said Telstra was first contacted by the clinic about this issue in mid-February, and over the next couple of weeks the company has sent technicians to the premises to investigate.

“Unfortunately, the cause was not diagnosed until early March, with the fix requiring the service to be disconnected and reconnected again,” he said.

“At the request of the clinic we were asked to delay this disconnection until Friday, March 10.

“Once this reconnection had occurred, a Telstra technician attended the site on Friday to reconnect the modem and check the service was fully operational again.

“Telstra has apologised to the clinic for the inconvenience caused by this technical error and will work with them to determine an appropriate level of compensation.”

The matter is expected to be resolved this month, in the meantime please dial 0416 896 231 if the landline (07) 5536 4961 does not connect to Tweed Skin Cancer Clinic.