Does Spark's "Connection Promise" actually work?

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Does Spark's "Connection Promise" actually work?

steve98

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#265603 31-Jan-2020 06:27

We had a fairly lengthy broadband outage in our area yesterday, beginning at roughly 11am and lasting until 6:30pm. After it had been restored I learned via a Facebook group for our area that it had been a planned outage, but Spark had not given advance notice of it to impacted users.

I messaged Spark via Facebook Messenger to ask why no advance notice. Agent #1 replied saying (without actually checking my account) that this is because I hadn't opted in to their 'Connection Promise' and that if I had I would have gotten a text with details about the outage and 20GB of mobile data to use for the duration of the outage.

I replied to Agent #1 explaining that I had in fact opted-in a few years ago and supplied a screenshot of my setup from MySpark. I asked her to investigate why the 'Promise' had been broken.

Agent #2 replied saying they would absolutely investigate, asking for my account details which I supplied.

Agent #3 then replied saying she had 'reset my details' and that the Connection Promise 'should' work next time.

I replied saying no... I wanted to know why it hadn't worked this time and reminded her that Agent #2 had said that she would 'absolutely' looked into it.

Agent #4 then replied saying it was likely because the mobiles I had entered into the Connection Promise setup were prepaid. She said if I wanted she could have her 'resolutions team' look at it in the morning.

At this point it was late so I let it go.

This morning I google searched for 'Connection Promise terms' and after less than 30 seconds I had verified that prepaid phones are eligible for the 'promise'.

So many questions. Obviously 'why didn't it work' is top of the list. Next is, 'why are Agents making all these assumptions without actually looking'. Then, 'why am I taking Spark's broken promise more seriously than they are?' and 'why does a different agent answer every time', followed by 'why do people even need to opt-in to this? why isn't it part of the provisioning process for everyone?'.

hio77

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#2410523 31-Jan-2020 09:16

Hi steve, can you pass me your details?

Connection Promise does work, so well that we haven't changed in in years since we built it.

Given it's kinda one of my babies, i test it very often. Have even broken it many times for my service..

As to what should have happened is, the first agent should have just manually provisioned it if they saw it as a reasonable cause (which it Sounds like it was.)

Background to how the automatic provisioning work, it is human verified. If it was also a cell tower outage, it's possible a deliberate decision was made to not automatically provision in the case impact would be too large.. Very rare this is the case though.

Manual is always possible (except if you have already used it in that 7 day period).

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steve98

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#2410563 31-Jan-2020 10:29

Cheers, I have PM'd you my account info.

hio77

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#2410592 31-Jan-2020 10:56

ok, this was a bit of a sticky one.

It was an outage on a main carrier for Chorus, as part of that some fibres were damaged that wasn't planned for causing loss of service.

those were then repaired due to the size of the outage impacted cell sites etc, Connection Promise was not automatically supplied, however for any customer that chatted/called or such it should have been applied.

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Spyware

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#2410610 31-Jan-2020 11:11

Do the agents have access to the necessary info to determine what you just told us??

Spark Max Fibre using Mikrotik CCR1009-8G-1S-1S+, CRS125-24G-1S, Unifi UAP, U6-Pro, UAP-AC-M-Pro, Apple TV 4K (2022), Apple TV 4K (2017), iPad Air 1st gen, iPad Air 4th gen, iPhone 13, SkyNZ3151 (the white box). If it doesn't move then it's data cabled.

hio77

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#2410613 31-Jan-2020 11:14

Spyware:

Do the agents have access to the necessary info to determine what you just told us??

Yup, it's all explained in documentation and big icons shown to agents.

the Details about the fault they should, but i will openly give leway in saying using their tool wasn't as quick as my inbox... I'm pushing to have that bit fixed though..

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steve98

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#2410769 31-Jan-2020 14:52

hio77:

Spyware:

Do the agents have access to the necessary info to determine what you just told us??

Yup, it's all explained in documentation and big icons shown to agents.

the Details about the fault they should, but i will openly give leway in saying using their tool wasn't as quick as my inbox... I'm pushing to have that bit fixed though..

Thanks for looking into it. It certainly seems like regular agents aren't well trained with how to deal with this kind of enquiry. You were able to get to the bottom of it very quickly, whereas I have just now received a message from Agent #5 who came back from my earlier request to investigate it with "one of our team have suggested checking in myspark to ensure that outage notifications are turned on, but aside from that we've had no luck finding out why a text wasn't received in this instance."

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hio77

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#2410773 31-Jan-2020 15:06

steve98:

Thanks for looking into it. It certainly seems like regular agents aren't well trained with how to deal with this kind of enquiry. You were able to get to the bottom of it very quickly, whereas I have just now received a message from Agent #5 who came back from my earlier request to investigate it with "one of our team have suggested checking in myspark to ensure that outage notifications are turned on, but aside from that we've had no luck finding out why a text wasn't received in this instance."

Mhm, unfortunately training isnt my job..

I've collected all your interactions and passed it along as feedback though.

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snnet

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#2410865 31-Jan-2020 17:35

I would just like to say, although this instance the connection promise wasn't automatically applied as explained above, when I was on copper and we had power outages, the cabinet up the road obviously lost power / ran out of battery backup (if any), I always got the notification that I had 20GB allocated to my mobile for data - was great that I didn't have to worry about it at all

halper86

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#2410995 1-Feb-2020 00:14

Yes. Had it applied last month when our ont failed