Spark System outage 16/06/16

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Spark System outage 16/06/16 - 20/06/16

hyperman

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#197866 15-Jun-2016 19:57

As nobody official has posted I thought I make sure everyone on here knows ....

Spark Have A major system upgrade going on over the weekend

http://www.spark.co.nz/itupdates

Big things to note

During the outage, you will be unable to:

Receive usage alerts for your mobile and broadband services
Top up a Prepaid mobile
Check your prepaid balances and usage
Add Extras or change your mobile, landline or broadband services
Use MySpark or the Spark Smartphone App
Check usage meters in MySpark
Sign up to Spark Free WiFi
Use TXT-a-Park or text voting services
Use our online store at spark.co.nz

and the staff cannot get around this; the systems been upgraded are the ones we use...

edit: add link

The views expressed by me are not necessarily those of my employer

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#1574680 15-Jun-2016 20:34

Four days? That's not good enough.

l43a2

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#1574686 15-Jun-2016 20:37

its a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge systems upgrade,change

keewee01

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#1574813 16-Jun-2016 08:32

rendezvous: Four days? That's not good enough.

Get over it - the changes happening are huge - it's not like upgrading Adobe Reader on your laptop!

Would you rather it gets done properly or we have another XT fiasco?

I'm a business user with 150 mobile users affected as well as all sort of other systems that I can't do anything with. I accept these changes/upgrades have to happen sometimes. There is some things I need to get done from a business perspective and I can't - but I will have to live with it until Monday.

(I was going to give the example of it not being like upgrading Microsoft Office... but then thought better of that as it could take days to upgrade! )

rendezvous

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#1574820 16-Jun-2016 08:41

Yes, a little condescending keewee01, I can comprehend that it is a large update and that it takes some time.

While it's a large update, there has been next to no effort put into informing customers about the outage. A link on their website? How many customers actually go to the website frequently enough to be aware of this? I'm sure there will be many customers to need a data add on, or try to use a text to park and have it not work. What about the customers who need to top up their prepaid phones and will be unable to use them for a few days? Losing some of those services for four days is not reasonable.

keewee01

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#1574833 16-Jun-2016 08:55

As a corporate customer I've had 3 detailed emails about it. And they were tagged in the subject line as important so I was drawn the read them. And the warning was plentiful.

I don't know if they did the same for PrePay customers - a text or an email if they had an address on the account? I would hope they did communicate directly some how, other than something on the web. If they didn't then that was very poor on their part and not good enough.

But your comment was about it being 4 days, not about communication. Four days is not unreasonable for the scale of what is happening.

xpd

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#1574834 16-Jun-2016 09:01

Yeah, thats pretty bad, some of the FAQ scenarios are a joke as well... think whoever their comms manager is needs to be given a prepaid mobile for that period that has 10c credit on it and see if they manage with no notice.

XPD / Gavin

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xpd

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#1574837 16-Jun-2016 09:03

keewee01:

I don't know if they did the same for PrePay customers - a text or an email if they had an address on the account? I would hope they did communicate directly some how, other than something on the web. If they didn't then that was very poor on their part and not good enough.

"We put some messages up online and sent text messages to everyone who usually tops up at this time."

Extremely poor comms. That message needs to be sent to ALL pre-paid users regardless what time theyve topped up in the past. Does anyone only top up at a certain time each day ? Doubt it.......

XPD / Gavin

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keewee01

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#1574859 16-Jun-2016 09:21

xpd:

keewee01:

I don't know if they did the same for PrePay customers - a text or an email if they had an address on the account? I would hope they did communicate directly some how, other than something on the web. If they didn't then that was very poor on their part and not good enough.

"We put some messages up online and sent text messages to everyone who usually tops up at this time."

Extremely poor comms. That message needs to be sent to ALL pre-paid users regardless what time theyve topped up in the past. Does anyone only top up at a certain time each day ? Doubt it.......

Yep - that's very poor. Even if they text-bombed everyone who has turned their phone on in the last 6 months then that would have got 99.9% of people... maybe that's why they're upgrading - they can't tell when someone has used their phone

xpd

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#1574865 16-Jun-2016 09:31

(sigh) Glad Im not a Spark user. Pretty poor attitude to customers.

XPD / Gavin

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old3eyes

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#1574866 16-Jun-2016 09:32

xpd:

(sigh) Glad Im not a Spark user. Pretty poor attitude to customers.

If you're not a Spark user them why the holly crusaded against them in this thread??

Regards,

Old3eyes

xpd

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#1574868 16-Jun-2016 09:42

Is just common sense/courtesy for ANY company to inform their customer base of an outage such as that.

When we have internal system outages at work, everyone gets notified, not just those that we think might be affected, because we cant read peoples minds when they might want to use that system for the first time in 6 months.

XPD / Gavin

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1101

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#1574893 16-Jun-2016 10:05

I'm sorry, but have any of those complaining actually gone to that Spark link to see whats actually affected

big woop , so cant topup over that period . Thats the worst of it.

sigh
"You can still use your mobile to text, call and use mobile data. You just won’t be able to top up,
check your usage, add Extras or make changes to your plan during the upgrade."

During the outage, you will be unable to:

Receive usage alerts for your mobile and broadband services
Top up a Prepaid mobile
Check your prepaid balances and usage
Add Extras or change your mobile, landline or broadband services
Use MySpark or the Spark Smartphone App
Check usage meters in MySpark
Sign up to Spark Free WiFi
Use TXT-a-Park or text voting services
Use our online store at spark.co.nz

firefuze

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#1574940 16-Jun-2016 11:27

People are making it sound worse than it really is, you won't be without service.

If you have no credit - no problem your phone will keep working

If your prepaid plan expires - no problem your phone will keep working

If you want to add extras - no need, your phone will work without buying them

If you want to check usage - also no real need as the metering isn't working during that period anyway

The biggest impact is really to customers wanting to buy new phones on their accounts or join Spark etc, they will have to wait a few days.

This has all happened several times over the last couple years when they have had major upgrades.

sbiddle

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#1574943 16-Jun-2016 11:28

Is this the ICMS upgrade?

trig42

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#1574971 16-Jun-2016 12:05

firefuze:

People are making it sound worse than it really is, you won't be without service.

If you have no credit - no problem your phone will keep working

If your prepaid plan expires - no problem your phone will keep working

If you want to add extras - no need, your phone will work without buying them

If you want to check usage - also no real need as the metering isn't working during that period anyway

The biggest impact is really to customers wanting to buy new phones on their accounts or join Spark etc, they will have to wait a few days.

This has all happened several times over the last couple years when they have had major upgrades.

So it is basically a Spark Free-for-all weekend? - go nuts on the data people!

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