I placed an order for a new iPhone for my wife on Friday and took advantage of the 12 months interest free - just like I did last year. I have today received email saying my order is on hold as I have interest free instalments left to pay and that I need to confirm I’m happy for those instalments to be taken on next month's account – the issue here is that I only had one instalment left (from last year's order) and it would have been taken next month anyway. Although I’ve responded yes to the email that they can take the instalment next month I'm waiting to hear from Spark whether or not my place in the order queue has slipped and that I’ll still get the phone on Friday the 21st of September as scheduled.
Going forward, Spark probably needs to look at how their ordering system works because there will likely be lots of people in the same position as me i.e. they placed an order last year on a 12 month interest free period and have upgraded last Friday – they have then received the email saying their order is on hold unless they agree to pay the remaining instalments on their next account. As per the above, the stupidity of this is that the final instalment on their 12 months is next month anyway and all Spark has done is hold up their order – people will be concerned now that their delivery date will have slipped because Spark cannot work out that they are simply upgrading annually - these are Spark's good customers and they may be disadvantaged.
There was a similar issue last year as I was in New York at the time and placed the order for an iPhone 8 for me and then when I went to buy more data for my roaming it turned out I couldn't as Spark's system couldn't process the data order while there was a pending order (the iPhone) in their system. This meant Spark had to refund all my data used in the USA from the date I placed the iPhone until I returned to NZ, which they happily did, but it shows that there is a lack of thinking in the system integration at Spark.
@hio77 - would be interested on yours, or anyone else from Spark's, view on this.