Vodafone to Slingshot

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › Vodafone to Slingshot

itchyNZL

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#250859 28-May-2019 15:57

Looking to move my services (VDSL, Landline, 2 Mobiles) to Slingshot from Vodafone, with the first year savings of $240 and then the 2nd year cost comparable to Voda - better mobile plans though with more data and the rollover as well. So price point slingshot wins but the only thing that i'm not sure about is the Slingshot network, i haven't heard anything good or bad about it but don't want to go for the swap and then end up with internet issues and poor reception.

Any comments from people that have switched, or words of warning to avoid switching prehaps?

Thanks

quentinreade

351 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

2degrees

#2247248 28-May-2019 16:31

I'm biased, but I think you'll be happy with the quality!

Happy to answer any questions here or via PM ... Cheers

Comms chap

2degrees

Mistenfuru

198 posts

Master Geek

#2247258 28-May-2019 16:55

quentinreade: I'm biased, but I think you'll be happy with the quality!

Happy to answer any questions here or via PM ... Cheers

Now you've got someone to complain to directly if something does go wrong!

sen8or

1789 posts

Uber Geek

#2247266 28-May-2019 17:03

Switched only a few months ago (just fibre) and went 99% smooth as silk. Sign up was a breeze via broadband compare (almost a little freaky as before I even had a chance to go onto filling out the account form, I had a slingshot rep on the ph doing it all for me) and I was able to choose the connection date. Made the date for about a months time (to allow 30 days cancellation from Vodafone), and once I got a confirmed email that all was set up at Slingshots end, cancelled my Vodafone services.

Texts / emails about a few days out advising the activation date was looming, the day hit and all happened as expected. Vodafone connection died, switched ONT from port 2 to port 1.

I say 99% smoothly as it seemed to take a while for connection to liven on the new router. Not sure if I didn't give it enough time to connect etc, but I was getting no internet signal. Phoned slingshot support, they took a few details. Not sure if they did anything or not at their end, but by the time I got off the phone, all was alive, and I was in 1gbps fibre heaven.

I understand I took a bit of a risk, cancelling vodafone before slingshot was actually livened, but with a 30 day termination clause on most ISPs, you have to act on faith that all will happen smoothly. I suspect fibre allocation process is somewhat smoother now its not all so new.

KiwiSurfer

1450 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Lifetime subscriber

#2247333 28-May-2019 19:13

Happy Slingshot Fibre user here. Don't use them for mobile though.

ubernoob

576 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#2247379 28-May-2019 21:18

I have fibre and mobile with Slingshot. Been with them for years . No problems. $5 discount for each mobile linked . They use Spark mobile network

Fiffle

17 posts

Geek

#2259826 17-Jun-2019 23:02

We used to be very happy with Slingshot for fibre and home phone. We moved away from Vodafone about 18 months ago because of the customer service there. Slingshot was great in comparison.

Six months or so later we were still very happy with Slingshot so we added a mobile to our account - all went fine. So much so, that when Slingshot rang six months later or so last month with a good offer for power that included a year's free mobile, we went for it.

We asked for the year's mobile discount to apply to a new SIM, which was promptly sent out. The power appeared to switch over seamlessly. For a couple of days all seemed good.

But activating and porting the new mobile SIM onto our account somehow overwrote the original mobile number on there. Which was also a business number. Not good.

From that point on we have experienced frustrating customer service from Slingshot. Completely different from the previous twelve months’ experience, which had been great.

A few days after it had been lost the original mobile number was thankfully restored, but for a week both SIMs kept switching numbers randomly, not just between two mobile numbers but also the default number that came with the new SIM. So three mobile numbers were randomly being active at different times on two mobile phones.

Texts would come through for one person on the other person's phone depending on which number/s were assigned to each SIM, which kept changing - a privacy nightmare.

I can't even begin to describe how inconvenient and time consuming it was. I lost count of how many times I had to describe to support what was going wrong, reiterate which phone number should be with each SIM, remind them that the new SIM had been put on the wrong plan, remind them that the support ticket wasn't ready to be closed yet as it wasn’t resolved...

During this frustrating time we got a retention email from our old power company (they hadn’t been able to reach us on mobile). Their service had actually been fine - consistently good support. Just we'd moved off our new customer pricing is all and had been looking around to save money.

The original power company's retention offer was really good and, because we had lost trust in Slingshot and hadn't yet experienced the phone deal (in a working capacity) that we'd been promised as part of our power with Slingshot, we said a big YES to moving back to our old power provider.

After 6 frustrating days of not being able to use our mobiles properly we escalated the Slingshot support ticket, as nothing we said seemed to make any difference to how the SIM phone number problem was getting handled.

Our phones calmed down after the 7th day, as soon as a manager stepped in to sort out the issue, and the mobile numbers began to work reliably again. We got offered a $35 credit to offset our bad experience. We found out this past weekend that that the goodwill credit includes the regular $10 discount for the two SIMs on our account, so was in fact a one-off $25 credit for our week of troubles.

Roll forward a few weeks later to this week, and it turns out Slingshot are still billing us for power even though we got retained by our old company, whose power billing never ceased for our address.

So now we are being invoiced twice for the same power by two companies. Both say to not pay the other.

Slingshot's support told us today we need to sort it out with the other company ourselves and agreed we could go to the Ombudsman if we wanted to.

Our current power company has thankfully said they will liaise with Slingshot themselves and aren’t leaving the problem in our lap. For now, anyway!

We don't mind who we pay for the power, as long as it is just once. But we are deeply unimpressed with the Slingshot customer support experience recently. Maybe we've just had an unusually bad run. Maybe it's a training issue. But we've massively lost trust and are looking to move on, however the power billing works out.

Funny, if the support had come across as genuinely apologetic and helpful initially we would have weathered the deep inconvenience of losing a mobile phone number (potentially permanently we were told), a full week's unreliable mobile communication on both our household's two mobile phones and getting put on the wrong plan. If we’d felt confident that our predicament was a priority to them, we would be staying despite the problems. Good customer service is that important to us.

I really hope experiences like this are few and far between with Slingshot and we've just been deeply unlucky.

Fingers crossed that Slingshot and our current power company work it out between them.

MatteGreen

52 posts

Master Geek

Trusted

Vocus

#2260005 18-Jun-2019 09:26

The definitely sounds like you've had a rough go of it and I'm very sorry for the poor experience.

I'd be happy to step in here and get the few remaining issues sorted.

Could you PM me some of your account details?

Please let me know!

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Fiffle

17 posts

Geek

#2263941 25-Jun-2019 12:05

Thanks MatteGreen for helping us with our power invoice issue!

Turns out Slingshot wasn’t at fault but they are refunding us anyway. We really appreciate getting this sorted out and getting clear explanations.

We are still thinking of moving on at some point but have had faith renewed in Slingshot and wouldn’t say anyone should stay away - we likely just had some unlucky experiences.

itchyNZL

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#2291109 6-Aug-2019 18:01

An update on the OP.

I made the switch over to Slingshot, and for the most part, went ok.

When I connected up I was told it was easier to make the change and go VDSL to VDSL, and then when I was connected the process would be started to get Fibre hooked up.

Simcards were posted out, and that was an easy switch, put the sim card in, ring a number to auto-activate, log in online and get the number transferred, only took an hour or two for the transfer.

I had to wait a bit with the broadband change over as had to wait close to the end of my billing cycle on Vodafone to avoid double billing. The broadband change was simple, I was away the day it happened so when I got back home I just simply changed over the router and was done. One thing to note though is Slingshot can't do Voice over VDSL, and my place wasn't wired up for the voice over the cable so I had to pay for the voice pack to get my calls diverted to my mobile, which they were charged at the mobile call rate. FYI Vodafone diversion doesn't seem to on charge for the calls when it's to your own mobile.

Turns out the fibre upgraded wasn't noted so I had to do this myself, and when you do it online they send you out another modem ($postage$) automatically. I emailed supported prior asking if they could do it to avoid the modem being sent out but ended up needing to do it online, and then sent an email to support asking to cancel the modem. Was told it was cancelled but a few days later it turned up along with the charge on my first bill. Have since received a prepaid bag though to send the second modem back.

Fibre was hooked up today, after all the stories you hear about the chorus techs, was pleasantly surprised with the install, nice and easy and as I wanted. -Overhead line, through the ceiling and into my data hub, no ducts on the cladding. +1 to Chorus. - Still waiting on the voice to come up but was told that could take a few hours.

Speeds for reference (your mileage may vary). I went with the 100/20 plan so hopefully, I don't notice the reduction in upload speed.

Vodafone VDSL - 19ms ping, 64.91Mbps down, 27.82Mbps Up

Slingshot VDSL - 13ms ping, 78.97Mbps down, 29.80Mbps Up

Slingshot Fibre - 3ms ping, 105.61Mbps down, 18.85Mbps Up

All in all happy with the change, and will be saving the cost of a mobile plan for the first year :)