Posts by Walter Nicholls
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Holy c**p - 8:20pm, phoned 0800 438 448 - the advertised waiting time is "1 hour and 40 minutes". My wife says "with a wait time that long I'm surprised there IS a queue"
Is Vodafone suffering a core meltdown or something? -
This may seem rosy-spectacled, but the LLU is starting to fix the NZ internet/broadband issues - at least in urban areas where there is the population density to support investment.
Technically NZ broadband is very good - yes slow and expensive compared to overseas, but that's primarily because of lack of competition, Telecom's monopoly on the copper meaning it has had no incentive to improve.
I don't think Telecom is a bad Telecommunications company, it just BEHAVES badly. Particularly with anti-competitive behaviour like connecting its own customers within 24 hours, but waiting until the Government-stipulated 3 days before connecting customers for its competitors.
At work we have TelstraClear copper (fortunate to be in an reasonably recently-built business district). It has not failed once since it was installed, it was naked DSL before unbundling. we consistently get the stated bandwidth, and the price is comparable with Telecom supplied DSL (can I haz $5 now?) for a much better service. But the vast majority of the infrastructure is under Telecom's control even with LLU.
Mind you, with competition like Vodafone, Telecom just has to weather the bad PR. The old IHUG that I hold affection for is gone, and Vodafone have clearly made an absolute hash of it since. Maybe IHUG peaked too early - if LLU had come a couple of years earlier, they would have been formidable now.
Vodafone have run the customer service into the ground. Ringing the help line still has 'our customer service team is currently receiving a large number of calls' and the expected wait time is 'one hour'. It's been like that for the bulk of the last 5 days. Judging from the conversations we have finally had, the poor systems and badly-trained personell will be largely to blame. One helpdesk person consistent tried to refer us to the "Red network" team - despite the fact that were not on the Red network and surely if they looked at their own computer screen it would have been obvious.
By the way, it is now 40 hours since a Vodafone supervisor was going to call us back. Still no call.
I know there are people inside Vodafone who are painfully aware of the mess, so maybe it will improve - I certainly hope so. I look forward to not caring, and being an Orcon customer.