In other news, salespeople are confused but still say copper is going away now, now, now

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › In other news, salespeople are confused but still say copper is going away now, now, now

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#2258626 15-Jun-2019 10:08

I always try to give the benefit of the doubt with these sort of things (Hanlon's razor and all) but after my elderly parents were very nearly convinced to sign up to wireless through Spark when UFB was mere months (possibly even weeks) away on their street using similar tactics and they already had excellent VDSL, I have little sympathy for the bad publicity they will get from this. To be fair though it is true that they're not the only ones in the telco industry to do it, and not the only industry that does it either.

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#2258627 15-Jun-2019 10:16

sidefx:

I always try to give the benefit of the doubt with these sort of things (Hanlon's razor and all) but after my elderly parents were very nearly convinced to sign up to wireless through Spark when UFB was mere months (possibly even weeks) away on their street using similar tactics and they already had excellent VDSL, I have little sympathy for the bad publicity they will get from this. To be fair though it is true that they're not the only ones in the telco industry to do it, and not the only industry that does it either.

I have mentioned it before in previous threads, my parents were hassled several times by spark to switch to wireless, it took some very firm words to get them to back off when the had perfect VDSL at the time of the calls.

I have no sympathy either.

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#2258628 15-Jun-2019 10:18

I had my parents-in-law (currently on fibre) approached to have it replaced with a wireless service - have in mind they don't even have a landline number at home anymore. Not only replace fibre with a wireless service, but the rep wanted then to swap ISPs at that. How could any company justify replacing fibre with mobile data?

Of course it wasn't approved by the family IT department (which is me, they told the rep to call me and I ended the conversation at the very beginning).

So no, I don't have any sympathy for people doing this.

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#2258698 15-Jun-2019 12:06

Vodafone seem to be going one step further and just moving some customers to wireless without asking first. My parents recently received a letter saying that they were being moved (from ADSL), although there were some limited grounds to opt-out.

Obviously not the same as trying to shift a customer already on fibre, and fixed wireless should result in a better service in their case. But, it's a bit questionable in my view the way they are initiating the move, without the customer first requesting it.

Equally, my parents could actually be moved to fibre, which would be the better option for them, except that they are concerned about how Chorus would get the cable to the house (which would likely need run along walls, etc).

At least Vodafone weren't claiming that the reason for the move was because copper was being shut down.

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#2258724 15-Jun-2019 13:11

Can someone explain the difference between RBI and fixed wireless? My knowledge in this area is patchy. At present I am reliant on VF RBI and my experience is terrible. Anyone promoting this as a 'better' alternative, whether Spark or VF, is committing an imprisonable offense in my opinion.

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#2258733 15-Jun-2019 13:42

Rikkitic:

Can someone explain the difference between RBI and fixed wireless? My knowledge in this area is patchy. At present I am reliant on VF RBI and my experience is terrible. Anyone promoting this as a 'better' alternative, whether Spark or VF, is committing an imprisonable offense in my opinion.

I "think" they are the same. Im on Fibre, but if I went to 4G Wireless, I'm nearish to a tower. At my last house, I did a 4G speedtest, got 87Mbit

You are rural, I think thats the issue. Distance to the tower. Us urbanites, the tower is not far from our sardine can population! Lots can get it and its close enough for high speed.

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#2258737 15-Jun-2019 13:57

At this point I'd support a complete ban on door-to-door salesmen. Have they ever made anyone's life better? Their tactics seem to always come down to a perceived knowledge gap (he's from the telco, he must know what he's on about) and the pressure of being right in the customer's face. If all the ISP wanted to do was make a special offer to the customer, then surely dropping a leaflet in the mailbox is plenty. Ban the lot.

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#2258741 15-Jun-2019 14:03

They are banned in Holland and other civilised countries where politics hasn't been subverted by commercialism. So is telemarketing.

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#2258829 15-Jun-2019 17:47

So how are people made aware of great new offers in those places? Do they need to call up and find out everything?

ripdog

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#2258921 15-Jun-2019 22:00

quickymart:

So how are people made aware of great new offers in those places? Do they need to call up and find out everything?

A leaflet isn't enough? Or an email? There's plenty of marketing avenues available that don't involve pressure or deceit.

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#2258939 15-Jun-2019 23:07

I dunno, I was asking Rikki how they do it over there.

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#2259031 16-Jun-2019 09:20

We still have advertising in Holland. Just not pushy home invaders.

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#2259629 17-Jun-2019 16:44

freitasm:

@kornflake: Would a Spark Employee, care to ask their PR team to comment here?

To be fair, I've quoted the portion where the Spark PR person commented on this specific case, read from "The article also says..."

Yup to circle back on it, What Lucy has said is the offical statement

Spark spokeswoman Lucy Fullarton said the company had spoken to the Spark manager who was dealing with the childcare centre and understood he was "confused about the issue".

The manager had provided information to Toddlers Turf that he "genuinely thought was correct when giving the customer context around the move to a new fibre plan", she said.

"He now understands he was incorrect and there is no timeframe set around the longevity of the copper network. He will not be communicating this incorrect information to any other customer. We'd like to apologise to this customer for the confusion we have caused," Fullarton said.

Fullarton said that as a result of the incident Spark would be contacting all of its business and consumer sales staff "to clarify that there is no timeframe for closing the copper network and to ensure that all of our people are giving accurate and useful information to our customers when recommending new Spark products".

I can confirm, there has been further clarification to all sales etc reps to ensure agents aren't confused and passing on any false information.

Copper isnt going away. As stated in the other thread, this is all about improving the experience. For simple setups, this is a great option.

Complex setups, not at all.

All comes down to how regular a copper fault occurs (remember we are entering winter) compared to 4G Tower faults (where often these end users will simply reconnect to another tower and not even notice a difference)

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networkn

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#2259634 17-Jun-2019 16:55

Vodafone refused to re-sign my fixed line and broadband based on copper, said copper was going away. I knew it wasn't and tried to get them to see the evidence but they kept doggedly insisting. In the end we came to a compromise, but it soured me to the point I switched companies to someone else in the end.

quickymart

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#2259663 17-Jun-2019 18:24

What were they trying to get you to change to instead? Cable? Fibre? Wireless?

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