I never thought the day would come, but I was more than impressed with the service I received last night while calling through a fault.

I was one of the hapless people in Mt Eden who lost power for 5 hours last night, and when it all came on I realised our phone line was dead.

So, I called Telecom expecting to have to wait for an hour and then be mucked around by someone who doesn't know what they're talking about, but boy was I surprised.

Albeit the "Voice Prompting" was somewhat annoying, it was tolerable. When I did get through to someone (took about 3 minutes), they did a quick check on my line, confirmed it was dead - suspected water in the lines from all that rain - said they would arrange a technician ASAP to come out and fix the problem.

After about 30 seconds, they told me it wouldn't be until Wednesday they'd be able to get a tech out to me (that's ok - they set a realistic expectation) and I've always got my datacard & laptop should I need the net in the meantime. Then they offered to divert all my calls to my mobile for free until the problem was fixed, and to top it all off they are giving me 1 months rental credit for being out of service for more than 36 hours! Man my jaw dropped!

Then, about 30 seconds later I received a text message informing me of my service number, confirmed the diversion etc etc!

This is one of the best experiences I've had from a call centre, let alone Telecom!

I'll happily take my hat off to the big T this time! (Just don't mention xtra support...!)