NZFF

Apologies, folks, for my unwarranted absence!

On Monday afternoon, the Auckland Transport chimpanzees managed to cut the fibre-optic cable when re-surfacing part of the road nearby. This sort of thing happens regularly (for most of the main services) as nobody appears to consult any plans as to where cables or pipes may be.

To add insult to injury, the response by Spark (Telecom/Chorus) was a series of denials, evasions and downright lies. The Internet (and land line) has now been restored after THREE days loss of service.

Even the Spark fault-reporting menu is insane: when reporting a fault to your broadband, you are told to check the status *by going online* to a particular page. What imbeciles. No ... I can't use my mobile data for Internet at home because, guess what, I hardly get a signal. This is Auckland, BTW - NZ's largest city.

I won't bore people with the politics behind the policy of out-sourcing everything here in NZ - or that buying and selling businesses has replaced *actually doing any business*, but the end result is absolutely PATHETIC. As usual, it's the little people that get shafted.

Adam .

Our electricity is the same - lots of detail on line about an outage, but you can only see it if you have a battery-powered device, and as soon as the outage ends the info is removed, so you can't find out later.

For cables and so on, we have a 'Dial before you Dig' service available by phone and online. Online, you put in the street address and you can see all the cabling nearby, and print out whatever bits you want. Very useful.
When I was getting a Bobcat operator's ticket, the fine for breaking a major comms cable could be as much as $25,000. That was in 2006, so no idea what it would be today.

ATB
Mike

Glad your ok .... pissed of but ok.
Seems when regulars here drop off the radar ... bad things have happened.

A fibre cable, now would be nice.

I'm 15 mins west of the motorway and we will have copper forever it seems. Our cable failed a couple of months ago following a lightning strike and it took 3 days to get it up and running again. Last Saturday it failed again as they had only done a patch job to get things working but now apparently all is good.

I have fibre here in central Dunedin, but my folks and my brother who live in one of the outlying suburbs wont be getting fibre anytime soon if at all, because there is no school there, no fibre to go in, this despite the fibre network running down the main road to the small coastal suburb of Brighton where there is a school. My parents place is literally 2m from where the fiber cable has been run.

We've had nearly 15 years of shoddy service up until now ... with our old copper lines in such poor condition that we lost connection almost every time it rained. All the engineers used to do was swap the pairs over with someone else and then wait until *they* complained ... and so on. They refused to upgrade the main area cable for *years*, as they kept telling us that fibre was "imminent". It really is a disgrace.

I don't understand how a company can be sold off, apparently, to give consumers "more choice" when the system remains [effectively] a monopoly. I'm waiting for the day when people can get together and take them [but who?] to court, as the service is essentially "not of marketable quality". Even when working, speeds rarely come up to the advertised rates (copper or fibre). If it were any other consumer item, you'd take it back to the shop and say "this thing doesn't bloody work - I want my money back!".

Further on the Monty-Pythonesque saga: Spark's offer of compensation (over and above the refund for 3 days' rental) was to give me some free minutes/data on my mobile phone plan. "But I don't have a Spark mobile (2Degrees)" ... "aah ... sorry, then we can't help you".

I have to add that after endless waiting for the "Support" helpdesk, the "technician" invariably spoke almost totally unintelligible pidgin English and appeared to have an IQ in single figures - answering all my questions with stock answers from a crib sheet. I'll bet *that* sounds familiar ...

I can remember when you used to get a person answer the call when you needed support but now all you can get is a machine and heap of recorded messages dial this # for this and this # for that and so on or you can get this and that from our website or push 0 for someone to talk to but you will go in the Que and maybe wait up to an hour or more for someone as we are getting a lot of calls right now.
So where has all the good service gone too????????

Adamski wrote:Apologies, folks, for my unwarranted absence!

On Monday afternoon, the Auckland Transport chimpanzees managed to cut the fibre-optic cable when re-surfacing part of the road nearby. This sort of thing happens regularly (for most of the main services) as nobody appears to consult any plans as to where cables or pipes may be.

To add insult to injury, the response by Spark (Telecom/Chorus) was a series of denials, evasions and downright lies. The Internet (and land line) has now been restored after THREE days loss of service.

Even the Spark fault-reporting menu is insane: when reporting a fault to your broadband, you are told to check the status *by going online* to a particular page. What imbeciles. No ... I can't use my mobile data for Internet at home because, guess what, I hardly get a signal. This is Auckland, BTW - NZ's largest city.

I won't bore people with the politics behind the policy of out-sourcing everything here in NZ - or that buying and selling businesses has replaced *actually doing any business*, but the end result is absolutely PATHETIC. As usual, it's the little people that get shafted.

Adam .

Hello Adam.

Don't worry, things are just as bad in Australia.

Cheers

Bernie

Adamski wrote:On Monday afternoon, the Auckland Transport chimpanzees managed to cut the fibre-optic cable when re-surfacing part of the road nearby. This sort of thing happens regularly (for most of the main services) as nobody appears to consult any plans as to where cables or pipes may be..

I did some work with a fibre installer a couple years back and was told by their guys they get charged something like $250 to get a survey done, or $150 fine if they cut / break a service. Can't remember the exact numbers, but it was that low and about that ratio. So they just didn't bother with surveys and took a punt...

whatever you do, don't move to Belgium.

Don't speak badly about the land of Waterzooi and Stoofvlees! Mmmh....

From mobile hence short

gsnde wrote:Don't speak badly about the land of Waterzooi and Stoofvlees! Mmmh....

I'm impressed! I thought it was all chips (fries) . The beer is good though!!!!

Adam.

Having food in Belgium is a great pleasure. And yes, the beer rocks!

From mobile hence short