First, we are part of the 9 per cent of people who live outside the cities and towns in Australia. As part of the non-urbanised sector we have come to expect that, for us, services will be less than ideal most of the time. However, we are just 17km outside a major Hunter Valley town a mere two hours north of Australia's biggest city, yet we receive only patchy reception for our NextG mobile phones.

For the majority of the time our two-year-old Samsung SGH-A412 phones display the words "Limited Service"  as they sit on their chargers at home. Sometimes they become really stroppy and tell us we can only make emergency calls.

This becomes really frustrating when people try to ring us. Often, the only time we are aware that a call has gone through to MessageBank is when we are half way to town and the phone beeps with a text message to call 101 to access the messages. And when you have a home office and don't go to town every day, this means some people -- especially city folk -- are mystified as to why we haven't responded to their message.

To rub salt into the wound, we pay to download the messages from Telstra's voice mail service. Admittedly this is only a few cents each time, but if we had a full-time mobile service this would not occur and we would not be charged. We'd be answering the phone when it rang.

Trying to text children (and soon grandchildren) is a farce worth viewing. We either end up standing on a sofa or outside on a kitchen chair.

And for those who suggest signing up with another carrier, forget it. For a start, Telstra has the "best"  coverage in our area. And even if Optus did have reasonable coverage we could not sign up with them. As everyone knows, bundles are the way to go to reduce total phone bills. This means having your landline and mobiles (and possibly internet provider) with the one company. The one time we opted for an Optus landline for a year or so, we went off the phone three times. Now I'm not talking conspiracies here, but every Telstra worker will tell you that if you have a problem with a Telstra number you will have your phone line repaired far quicker than with another telco. It happened to us: we were off the phone for five-and-a-half days on one occasion and Telstra showed no interest in fixing it -- even after the compulsory reporting of the problem to Optus first.

Yet the times we have been off the phone since returning to Telstra, have been both fewer and more quickly corrected.

However, the item that causes more steam to come out my ears than anything is the gouging Telstra commits with its bills.

Once our mobile plans ran out last year, we assumed that, like the old analogue and CDMA phone plans, conditions remained the same. In other words, the specifics of the contract stayed in place until renewed. But no. Telstra actually increased its rates for mobile calls without telling us. It was only when I became suspicious about the continuing high price of owning a Telstra mobile that I checked the bills.

This required obtaining a login and password on Telstra's website, because we were no longer sent an itemised bill with price-per-call details.

Now, the last I heard it was illegal to change the conditions of an expired contract without informing the other partner. I'll be checking on that further with the telecommunications ombudsman if my blood keeps boiling like this.

Anyway, in August we signed up for another 12-month plan of $20 a month with some included credits. Given that we don't use the mobiles all that often, it seemed sufficient and we usually pay just the $20 amount each month. In October 2010, a minor family crisis found us apart and ringing each other quite often. The result was a $322 bill for Anne and an $82 bill for me. Reason enough to ring billing inquiries to see if there had been some mistake.

The first call was to "Carlos"  whose second language was English but was sufficiently understandable, despite being based in the Philippines. After 35 minutes on the phone with him and numerous interruptions to "check with my supervisor", Carlos came to the stunning conclusion that the reason the bills were so outrageously inflated was because we had made more calls.

Barely able to restrain myself, I hung up rather than abuse the poor sod.

Exactly a week later I was still seeing red over what I thought was price gouging so checked our bill on the Telstra website.

Now there's an aside here. Part of our $20 monthly plan was a homelink  number. We dialled in 12488 from our mobiles and were connected to our home phone at no charge. It's another reason we bundle with the one carrier.

The homelink number only gave us three minutes of free time, but it was sufficient most of the time. If we did exceed the time by even one second, then the call was charged at three minutes and one second.

When I checked the itemised calls on the website, I discovered that we had been charged for all the homelink calls, which was specifically opposed to our new contract details.

So once again I was on the phone to Telstra's call centre workers in the Philippines, this time to "Roderick". He pointed out that we had a "My Hour"  option as the marketing gimmick this time rather than homelink. The My Hour option gave us free calls from our mobiles from 9am to 10am, which is not much use when at that hour we are usually at home working where our mobiles don't.

In the August call to update our contracts I had specifically asked for, and was promised, the same deal we had on the previous contract, before Telstra rudely started charging us excessive rates for our calls.

Fortunately, Rod suggested he transfer me to mobile billing inquiries (apparently based in Australia). And to Telstra's credit they took $60 off the bill.