Just treat this as a need to vent. If you like, you can act like an expensive psychotherapist and just say "u-hmm, u-hmm, and how does that make you feel..?". I think that I'm happy simply unloading for now in order to get rid of my frustration. We'll see at the end. If you're able to offer advice then feel free, otherwise take this post as simply me finding an outlet. It's simpler than going postal.

I have a Spark personal account which costs c.$800 per month (yep, $800). I'm not complaining about that, we've a large household; 5 data hungry phones, a couple of data-only accounts for iPads, unlimited VDSL broadband and a landline.

In the last few weeks, I've been trying to do two things; 1. Order fibre, 2. Take an existing working pre-pay service and add it to my monthly account.

1. Fibre: As you can guess, fibre isn't going well. But I don't blame spark for that. Chorus are appearing to be doing their best to prove why monopolies don't have to care at all about a retail business's customers. I'm waiting on Chorus getting consent to climb up the pole to connect the fibre. The very pole that they just climbed up a week before when they cabled up the street. (Seems a bit premature for them to advertise they have completed fibre installation in my street when weeks of consent are required each time someone needs a connection, but nevertheless that's how they roll) It's also somewhat odd that they strung it all between the poles, considering that this week the entire street was scheduled to be dug up so new water mains could be laid. I'm not talking a little bit of roadworks here.. Chorus took over the street for three weeks to run fibre the full length of the poles down the street, and this last couple of weeks, the entire street has been closed as they have dug huge trenches today the pipes. Now, I understand that Spark pretty much have their hands tied here, however having selected a 200/200 unlimited fibre plan, which is their most expensive package and would push my monthly costs to nearer $860 per month, you'd think that they would take up my gauntlet a bit more and keep pushing Chorus for updates and estimates. Not really working that way, but that's not actually my gripe anyway believe it or now, I'm simply digressing through frustration... my real problem is...

2. Mobile:  All I wanted to do was take an existing Spark pre-pay service and add it to my account. It hasn't worked and Spark only tend to respond these days if someone has a public tantrum, so i am also resorting to whining about @SparkNZ on twitter to get a response (which does drive a response, but doesn't actually get the flipping problem fixed...). I have called them each day (wait times varied from 15mins to 45 mins), been in the retail store twice, chatted online three times (wait times of 20mins to 30mins), and even got a call back that then actually kept me on hold for a further 10 mins. I just keep being told the order has failed, so I am having to continue to use it as a pre-pay. I credited the account so I could buy a data package and now it just keeps telling me that an order is pending and doesn't progress the order. Doesn't matter what extra I try add. So, previously I had a working pre-pay phone, I then tried to give Spark more of my account based business, and to add another service to what i think is a handsome monthly income for them from a single household, and I am left with a phone not on account as I wanted, with an order problem no one can fix, no estimate on resolution, no working data on it won't let me add a data (or any other) extra despite having over $70 credit on I can't use. I'm currently having a parallel conversation with their web-chat which involve see waiting for 40 minutes for someone to come available. I started as being 3rd in the queue, moved to 5th somehow and now I am 2nd. We'll see what they can do about adding a data package some other way. But this is all them. No Chorus to blame, no other service provider that they need consent from, just them... and it has hardly been simple and the corresponding service is just predictably awful.

You know... this hasn't made me feel better at all. I don't know whether any other provider would care any more or any less about my custom, but in writing this out, I have some direction.

I shall wait for the whole fibre debacle to play out. Then as soon as I am physically connected, I will simply offer out my monthly combined landline, broadband and cell phone requirements and see which of the other retail providers can at least pretend to make me feel that my custom means something to them (note i said pretend, at times like this, I'd be even happy with the odd empty gesture and lip service, because I am not even being made to feel that the income they get from me is worth anything to them). Yep, that's the way to go... or am i just postponing doing anything until everything is working and then I'll be too lazy to change... oh, wait... that would be annoying...