I have just had the week from hell trying to become a Telecom XT customer on their Pre-Pay service. My wife purchased a phone on line through Telecom last week and requested a number port from Voda to Telecom. Seemed pretty simple. The money came of the credit card and we were adviced when the phone would arrive and the number would be ported over!

Unfortunately the phone took over a week to arrive (missing the initial number porting deadline). The number porting was delayed by us twice (lots of fun with their call centre) and then finally kind of happened 3 days after we actually received the phone! Great we thought slightly bumpy but job done! Not so fast...

When we tried to make a call we found we had no credit. It seems when you port a voda number to Telecom they wipe your existing telecom number balance and you lose your $$. So we called their pre-paid help line number. The nice lady in Manila then told us the voda number didnt exist (despite the fact I was calling her on it) and referred me back to *123 in NZ, who also told me the number didnt exist before transfering me back to manila (who once again told me the number didnt exist) before transfering the balance from the old 027 number to the newly ported vodafone number (which still does not exist according to the Telecom website). In addition they were not able to process a credit for the money we lost when we set a my favourites and txt 150 package up on the phone.

I must confess being new to Telecom I am somewhat staggered by how bad they are with their customer service. Is this really good enough in todays competative market? Why are they working so hard to prevent customers spending their money with them? If it wasnt for the on net pricing plans like my favourites that made us go to XT pre-paid would they have any new customers?