When Telecom decided to change your plan from Big Time they nullified your contract, this means unless you sign another contract you are on a month by month basis.
No company may completely change a contract and not nullify it, therefore you must sign another term contract to be locked into it again. However - I don't doubt that Telecom's call center will try and bull**** you.
Well, the experience I've had with the staff in New Zealand at least, are honest and actually tell you that they are unsure of certain info if they don't know.
The CSRs that I've been dealing with in Manila (Philippines) though, are a completely different story... Most of them seem to try their best, but they just don't know certain things, and/or give misleading information.
I'll be back with some concrete evidence though. You can never be sure of companies and their horrid contracts.
I've had nothing but trouble with Telecom. They gave me the wrong username 3 times for my broadband then made up a lie about the line being down, so I waited all day for it to work with no success. After calling at 7pm, (first call being at 9am) I was informed there was no outage and my username was wrong. Not even an apology was given.
The only person I've found of any help, was a guy that deals with line disconnections. Ironic, no?
Customer Service in New Zealand is a joke in all industries, but Telecom seem to have taken it to the extreme. A sheer lack of competition gives no reason for staff to be helpful and competitive to keep custom, therefore the end user suffers. Only the government forcing Telecom to completely dismantle will result in any improvement.I would love to see Telecom get ripped to shreds for shear enjoyment, its ridiculous that I can call a Chinese mobile cheaper than a mobile in New Zealand on another network. In the US you can get unlimited plans on your cellphone for little more than $10 per month.
Telecom should never have launched the Big Time plan if they could not commit. It is the second time they have removed an unlimited plan. No excuse can possibly justify such pathetic business practice. I will be writing to the commerce commission and encourage others to do the same.
Like many, I shall finish my degree and high-tail it out of this country, at least until theres around 20million people here to create some kind of economy. It would be nice to remove the monopoly's and duopoly's this country has been founded on. Quite simply put - "Too big to fail, too big to exist".
Wrong username? For DSL? You don't even need a correct username/password to connect...
louisgoodier: I would love to see Telecom get ripped to shreds for shear enjoyment, its ridiculous that I can call a Chinese mobile cheaper than a mobile in New Zealand on another network.
And you blame Telecom? Why not vodafone? They're just as guilty for this.
DSL will connect without a username for all of about 3-4 mins then kick you off. Telecom periodicly checks for authenticated users. Amongst this user group is a default user that comes pre-loaded onto Telecoms routers. The Telecom technician called this function a "tool" - I call it another Telecom joke.
louisgoodier: DSL will connect without a username for all of about 3-4 mins then kick you off. Telecom periodicly checks for authenticated users. Amongst this user group is a default user that comes pre-loaded onto Telecoms routers. The Telecom technician called this function a "tool" - I call it another Telecom joke.
I've never created a username/password for DSL (I have no idea where I should do/have done this) and don't get kicked off after "3-4 minutes".
moshpit77: You need a username and password so your router can connect to dsl, do you not?
Yes, you do. However, it doesn't have to be valid. For instance, I spent half the year connecting with my username/password set in my modem as t/t.
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I was given the explanation of an incorrect username causing my instability problems. Line drop-outs etc. After changing the username, it authenticated and the line was stable. They may have been blatantly lying to me and done a port reset. I do not know what to believe from Telecom anymore.
In a previous call I asked one of there technicians what my MTU should be and got told 2500 (outside the range capable on DSL, it should be 1492). It seems they pick random numbers, facts and explanations for everything.
I'm fed up with Telecom and have had nothing but trouble from them.
An MTU of 2500... That's awful (to be told something so rubbish.) Should be 1500 on PPoA (which Telecom DSL is) unless you've got a Netgear (some seem to have issues with this.)
As for the username thing, it is possible that they run something like, but I don't really see a point in doing so.
I put in a service request while on Big Time to do with ustream not working, and was told on the phone by a technician that ustream won't work properly in NZ because it's all hosted in the US, even said he tried it himself at home just for me on his full speed Telecom plan and it wouldn't work. Ironically I was at work when he phoned me, watching perfectly clear ustream on a Telecom broadband (non Big Time) connection!
After speaking at depth with a telecom technician at Victoria Uni on one of the open days, I was intrigued to find out that Telecom thought there international lines could handle the pressure of another unlimited plan. When they launched all there new cache's around New Zealand, even approaching the idea of caching torrents it seemed feasible. Under New Zealand law it is legal to have copyright protected torrent traffic cached as long as it it not opened or modified in any way.
However, they quickly found traffic shaping and caching simply couldn't help enough to keep the international lines from slowing. Rather than take a profit loss, they've kicked the plan out. As if they don't make enough money as it is. The commerce commission need to step into telecommunications and sort out the mess it has become.
FYI: 1. No, you don't need the correct username/password to get on to DSL or to authenticate over PPPoA. 2. The only reason you'd use it is if you have a Static IP (as they are loaded onto usernames, not to the ASID or phone numbers/lines), or if you felt like using it all of a sudden. 3. Telecom is already a privatised company, the government were the ones who sold it in the first place. 4. Monopoly being the only company that has owns the phone lines, but I don't see any way around it if they were the only ones who installed it in the whole country since a hundred years ago. 5. NZ has a very poor population density (not a lot of people spread out in a large field), so as a business it's not even viable or feasible to provide cheaper/better services. 6. Agreed, whoever told you that the MTU should've been 2500, is an idiot. 7. Government has already split Telecom into three different business entities when the Operation Separation that came into effect around 2007. It allowed LLU, and other ISPs to get an even playing ground with Telecom (as far as being an ISP goes). 8. Telecom thought they could control the unlimited plan, but people have been abusing the traffic management on purpose. They figured out ways to get past it, and deliberately pushed it to the extremes of 800-1000GB per month. When customers abuse a service, and many start to do it... There's no real way to manage it, other than to cancel it. Only takes a few to ruin it for all of us. 9. I think Telecom did good for even trying to get unlimited usage here in NZ. It was a solid effort on their part, and I don't see any other big ISPs with a proper unlimited broadband plan anymore (when Orcon had it, it sure was amazing though... and abusing Vodafone was oh-so-fun). In the end, they are a business and not a charity, they need to be earning money to sustain themselves.
All in all, if you want cheap, fast, reliable, and unlimited broadband... You're definitely not going to get it in NZ (or Aus) for years and years to come.
Sorry for the long post, but just giving some quick facts that I know.
The Fair use policy kicked off the people abusing the unlimited plan to that extent. Telecom really have no excuse other than poor judgement, and poor business practice.
Which would've been much better than kicking everyone off? Since they were getting rid of the plan altogether, and losing so many customers in the process, I'm sure they've given it much thought and a large percentage of the people on Big Time were certainly abusing it (myself included, ~100GB/month). I think it would've made even more of a news headline if it kicked only some people off, and some people not (which then, it wouldn't really be "unlimited" to begin with).
Other than Telecom thinking it could provide unlimited internet in the first place to NZers, I don't see what all the fuss is about. At least we've had it for a little while, rather than none at all.
For sure though, I'm moving away from Telecom, as their current plans are expensive compared to the usage that you can get elsewhere.
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