Every month I pay my Telstra Bigpond cable internet bill, and every month, when I turn the page to check the payment options, I begin to tear my hair out. How can it be that the largest ISP in Australia can't get it's act together and allow me to pay my bill using BPAY?

As a small businessperson (and small businesses don't get much smaller than mine) even I can use MYOB to let my customers pay their bills using BPAY. Here's Australia's largest company, with other divisions (mobile phones, landlines, etc) that allow you to pay using BPAY, but the ISP business - arguably, the division with customers most likely to want to pay online using BPAY - can't do it.

To add insult to injury, while Bigpond lets you pay online using credit card, they've started charging you up to 1.69% to pay with your credit card. Incredible! And I'm a shareholder of this massive sauropod of a company? I'm so embarassed!

Don't bother ringing customer service to ask why, they wouldn't have a clue. The reason probably lies in some complex inter-Telstra political dispute - one middle-manager that can't get along with another, or perhaps a billing platform built on one stupid-arse Microsoft system that can't talk to the stupid-arse Java system the ISP logging system runs on.

Aaarrrrgh!