Why so difficult to port to Spark?

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Why so difficult to port to Spark?

nitrotech

1285 posts

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#240906 2-Oct-2018 09:53

I have a client on fibre that's with a small local provider and getting poor speeds and i've suggested that they port over to spark - man i wish i'd never suggested it.

They are on unison fibre (which Spark support) firstly they spent over a month trying to convince the spark account manager that the ISP they are currently using actually existed - they sent the account manager the invoices from the ISP and all other info but nothing happened, I even suggested just creating a new connection on port 2 of the ONT however Spark don't support that. It wasn't until I sent them a list of unison RSP's that they finally acknowledged that the local ISP existed and apparently put in a work around in the system the enable the porting.

But that's not the end of it, it's now been weeks and no porting date - now no communication from the account manager.

It's been such a poor experience and totally contrary to all my other dealings with spark, the client is understandably unhappy.

What to do when the spark account manager won't even respond?

xpd

Geek @ Coastguard NZ
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#2099862 2-Oct-2018 10:18

Go further up the chain. Sounds like your account manager dosent want anything to do with it - ask for a change. You're allowed to :)

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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hio77

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Lizard Networks

#2099869 2-Oct-2018 10:28

Being an account manager is involved, it would be on the digital side which i don't touch.

It sounds likely the small RSP your with would be under a parent company for LSP notifications which can make porting very difficult.

DM me details including who the account manager is and i'll see if i cant give it a push internally.

This isn't what i'd see as a normal experience, off the top of my head.. i can't think of a single customer with an account manager that doesn't speak volumes about them. I highly suspect there is more to the story..

Recently was passed a story from a local business, where the account manager was out there at 9pm on a weekend getting a solution in place to enable the business to continue operating after an unfortunate loss of connectivity on the chorus network.

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Any comments made are personal opinion and do not reflect directly on the position my current or past employers may have.

chevrolux

4962 posts

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#2099882 2-Oct-2018 11:19

Is it a Spark Account Manager? Or just a business hub muppet?

I generally don't like tar everybody with the same brush, but I am yet to meet a business hub rep that 1. actually understands what they are selling their client for fixed line services and 2. understands the migration procedure.

Peppery

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#2099923 2-Oct-2018 12:19

chevrolux:

Is it a Spark Account Manager? Or just a business hub muppet?

I generally don't like tar everybody with the same brush, but I am yet to meet a business hub rep that 1. actually understands what they are selling their client for fixed line services and 2. understands the migration procedure.

A bit off topic, but definitely agree about the Business Hub team. We switched about a year ago and we're now on our 3rd account manager. Getting anything done (or just getting in touch) is a non-trivial process. They're happy to sell us services that they don't seem to know a lot about too.

Definitely recommend escalating if at all possible if you are just dealing with a hub member.

Aredwood

3885 posts

Uber Geek

#2099941 2-Oct-2018 12:36

Get Chorus fibre installed. Although probably best to use another ISP such as Voyager for the Chorus fibre connection. Otherwise Spark will try to use the Unision fibre again, and you will be back to square one.

Keep the Spark connection when the port eventually completes. As it will provide good redundancy to have 2 fibre connections, that are on separate ISPs, separate LFCs, and which have different peering.