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robjg63
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  #1500502 27-Feb-2016 20:01
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crichton:

What a comedy to read all this lot.  Your complaints and frustration make very amusing reading.  Obviously very few of the posters here have ever worked in a team responsible for some form of public service.  If a major fuse blows you don't go looking for generators - that could run the risk of further damage.  You have to establish why the fuse blew and remove the fault if possible.  You have to ensure that nobody was injured by the exploding fuse - and render first aid, call ambulance etc even before starting on restoring service. Then you have to restore the service which may mean reloading systems, going through required warm up times etc.  Checking all the way that the systems themselves weren't damaged by the incident that blew the fuse.  You don't man/people your phones because these days they're probably run off the same power source that just got zapped.  If you have additional spare staff not actively engaged in restoring the service, then maybe, just maybe, you get them involved in trying to explain it all to several thousand users - provided that you have some way of communicating with them other than by waving a long banner out of the window.  I don't know anything about WXC installations, I'm just guessing. And probably weekend means reduced staff levels because the rate you pay for service doesn't cover 24x7 full staffing.


Fellow Geeks -if your activities require absolutely 100% failsafe phone and internet services then you're going to have to face up to some hefty bills for that level of service, if you can find a provider willing to take it on.



Not a wxc/VF customer so not personally affected, but it's p!ss poor to not update;
Web sites
Social media

If something is broken that's somewhat annoying or inconvenient, but at least let the customers know. Even just simple acknowledgement that service is down and it's being investigated is better than nothing.

It's a communications company - start acting like one...




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freitasm
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  #1500504 27-Feb-2016 20:07
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crichton:

 

What a comedy to read all this lot.  Your complaints and frustration make very amusing reading.  Obviously very few of the posters here have ever worked in a team responsible for some form of public service.  If a major fuse blows you don't go looking for generators - that could run the risk of further damage.  You have to establish why the fuse blew and remove the fault if possible.  You have to ensure that nobody was injured by the exploding fuse - and render first aid, call ambulance etc even before starting on restoring service. Then you have to restore the service which may mean reloading systems, going through required warm up times etc.  Checking all the way that the systems themselves weren't damaged by the incident that blew the fuse.  You don't man/people your phones because these days they're probably run off the same power source that just got zapped.  If you have additional spare staff not actively engaged in restoring the service, then maybe, just maybe, you get them involved in trying to explain it all to several thousand users - provided that you have some way of communicating with them other than by waving a long banner out of the window.  I don't know anything about WXC installations, I'm just guessing. And probably weekend means reduced staff levels because the rate you pay for service doesn't cover 24x7 full staffing.

 

Fellow Geeks -if your activities require absolutely 100% failsafe phone and internet services then you're going to have to face up to some hefty bills for that level of service, if you can find a provider willing to take it on.

 

 

On the other hand you are assuming everyone reading this thread works in the industry. Please remember that these forum are read by consumers as well as professionals.\

 

 





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JamesL
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  #1500511 27-Feb-2016 20:16
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crichton:

 

blah blah

 

 

WxC provides VOIP servers to some pretty large corporations that were also impacted who I'm sure pay for a highly available service.. so it wasn't just average joe blogs impacted by the outage..




sbiddle
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  #1500515 27-Feb-2016 20:36
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JamesL:

 

crichton:

 

blah blah

 

 

WxC provides VOIP servers to some pretty large corporations that were also impacted who I'm sure pay for a highly available service.. so it wasn't just average joe blogs impacted by the outage..

 

 

At least some of their business/enterprise voice was up and unaffected by the outage.

 

 


mattwnz
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  #1500516 27-Feb-2016 20:37
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mercutio:

mattwnz:


mercutio:


mattwnz: Why don't there companies have independent hosted network status pages? Don't they have any social media presence?


 


it's called twitter.  and they probably just don't have anyone that felt inclined to do it.


 



 


Or Facebook. Even small companies have a social media presence.  costs hardly anything to communicate with customers this way. If I was a customer I wouldn't be happy that they haven't communicated the problem via their official channels such as twitter and Facebook.



i'm an ex-customer.  they didn't really impress me with their invoicing  systems  and their voice portal or whatever left a lot to desire.


 


the problem with things like facebook is that if you have an outage like this and no-one to maintain it you just get lots of people bitching, then people come back to it later and all they see are complaints..  it's usually smaller companies and larger companies that jump into social media.. but wxc is in the awkward middle stage afaik.


 



Even tiny companies maintain their social media accounts. I've run a saas company, and when we have outages, one of the the first things we do is post an announcement on the status page. it means that we don't get as many customers contacting us to report the problem, as we can keep them all up to date online. Not only saves everyone a lot of time, it removes the panic, as they can see it is being addressed.

I notice that vodafone status page calls these customers ex wxc customers, who are affected, so it pressure it should have always been on their net work status page.

NonprayingMantis
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  #1500526 27-Feb-2016 21:22
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crichton:

What a comedy to read all this lot.  Your complaints and frustration make very amusing reading.  Obviously very few of the posters here have ever worked in a team responsible for some form of public service.  If a major fuse blows you don't go looking for generators - that could run the risk of further damage.  You have to establish why the fuse blew and remove the fault if possible.  You have to ensure that nobody was injured by the exploding fuse - and render first aid, call ambulance etc even before starting on restoring service. Then you have to restore the service which may mean reloading systems, going through required warm up times etc.  Checking all the way that the systems themselves weren't damaged by the incident that blew the fuse.  You don't man/people your phones because these days they're probably run off the same power source that just got zapped.  If you have additional spare staff not actively engaged in restoring the service, then maybe, just maybe, you get them involved in trying to explain it all to several thousand users - provided that you have some way of communicating with them other than by waving a long banner out of the window.  I don't know anything about WXC installations, I'm just guessing. And probably weekend means reduced staff levels because the rate you pay for service doesn't cover 24x7 full staffing.


Fellow Geeks -if your activities require absolutely 100% failsafe phone and internet services then you're going to have to face up to some hefty bills for that level of service, if you can find a provider willing to take it on.



You are missing the point. Outages happen. People accept that. What they do not accept is being left totally in the dark about what is going on.
It takes literally seconds to post a message on Facebook about the outage,

In fact it *saves* you time because customers who see that message will realise it's wider than just them, and so not need to phone up and clog your help desk..

hio77
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  #1500530 27-Feb-2016 21:33
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Stuff has done a great job on reporting this!

 

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/77343123/Vodafone-broadband-and-phone-outage-across-NZ?cid=dlvr.it

 

 

 

i must give props to the editor for their choice of title, love it.





#include <std_disclaimer>

 

Any comments made are personal opinion and do not reflect directly on the position my current or past employers may have.

 

 




mercutio
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  #1500532 27-Feb-2016 21:37
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hio77:

 

Stuff has done a great job on reporting this!

 

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/77343123/Vodafone-broadband-and-phone-outage-across-NZ?cid=dlvr.it

 

 

 

i must give props to the editor for their choice of title, love it.

 

 

 

 

NZHerald have an article too.

 

 

 

Maybe they both read Geekzone?

 

 

 

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11596752


freitasm
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  #1500534 27-Feb-2016 21:47
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From Stuff:

 

"Vodafone issued an apology to customers for the inconvenience and advised that some residential customers may need to reboot their modem to restore the broadband connection."

 

No, they didn't. They probably sent a canned message to the journalist. Sending an apology to customers would be contacting those 30,000 affected with a message, instead of being quiet the whole day.

 

 





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Azzaw1980
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  #1500539 27-Feb-2016 22:04
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OK looks like their voip and websites are all back up online including the xport one. Fingers crossed they get their pop server up and running for emails soon :-(

mattwnz
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  #1500540 27-Feb-2016 22:07
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It maybe an idea to merge this forum with Vodafones now, to avoid any further confusion, as it appears their customers now come under the Vodafone brand.


freitasm
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  #1500545 27-Feb-2016 22:31
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mattwnz:

 

It maybe an idea to merge this forum with Vodafones now, to avoid any further confusion, as it appears their customers now come under the Vodafone brand.

 

 

The day WxC was bought I asked them about merging with Vodafone and they asked me not to - although now it sounds like a good idea.





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mercutio
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  #1500573 28-Feb-2016 00:34
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http://mirror.xnet.co.nz/ is still down.


turnin
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  #1500575 28-Feb-2016 07:11
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still down .
I just don't care anymore.
I'm a little annoyed about the outage , I recognise they are inevitable.....but I'm very upset that vf thinks it's OK not to communicate with hundreds of thousands of customers who will be rebooting and checking all manner of stuff.
A simple text message or as others have pointed out a independently hosted status website, a Twitter or Facebook feed could have save literally thousands of hours of people's time. But this was not done, and it wouldn't be the first time.

If I ran my business like that I'd be toast


dimsim
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  #1500577 28-Feb-2016 08:01
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VF are pretty good at sending a text when there's going to be some mobile disruption in the area you are in.

 

Surely a simple text notifying customers of disruption is not too much to ask of a Comms Company.

 

 


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