Orcon vs. Snap comparison

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aros71

122 posts

Master Geek

#116190 21-Apr-2013 16:21

I have fibre at home and am with Orcon. Recently I've been less than impressed with their service regarding international bandwidth.

Although I am still in contract with them, I looked around at other providers and have observed that Snap seems to be offering a much better value plan for UFB/Fibre. They even zero-rate youtube - which is the major achilles' heel of my home plan due to my 11yo daughter's iPod touch... she can go 6GB in a day during school holidays easily, unless I go into Evil Overlord mode and shut the wifi off...

So - what's the catch? Do they have a call centre that takes an hour to get through to? Is their international bandwidth strained? Do they have monstrously slow ping times?

Common sense tells me if something looks to good to be true, it probably is. Coming from Orcon, Snap most definitely falls into this category.

NonprayingMantis

6434 posts

Uber Geek

#803111 21-Apr-2013 16:25

I'm curious what plan you are on with orcon to compare with snap? You know orcon do unlimited for $99?

Of course, that's not to say your experience with snap won't be better. Most people on this forum will rave about how awesome snap is.

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billgates

4623 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#803112 21-Apr-2013 16:26

Call centre is in Christchurch I believe. Takes few minutes at most to get through to the support person. They have great support via twitter as well. I have a VDSL2 connection with them and very happy with the service incl their VOIP line. I stream movies and tv shows via netflix, hulu plus, dishworld etc from US to NZ very happily using Snap's connection. My latency to NZ is 10ms and to US (LA) is 150ms. Very happy camper. Waiting for Snap to setup their handover connection in Hamilton so I can switch to their UFB offering as well.

Do whatever you want to do man.

aros71

122 posts

Master Geek

#803113 21-Apr-2013 16:28

NonprayingMantis: I'm curious what plan you are on with orcon to compare with snap? You know orcon do unlimited for $99?

I was on that plan - but Orcon maintain two bandwidth pools - one for the unlimited customers, and one for the capped. On the unlimited plan, speeds are not guaranteed, and a "fair usage" policy applies... Since I work from home conducting webinars and the like, I don't need a plan that could be arbitrarily slowed down - I need a degree of reliability which is what made me shift from DSL to Fibre in the first place.

In terms of my Orcon plan - am on the 60GB plan fibre 30/10 with the VoIP line thrown in as is usual on Fibre.

BlakJak

1094 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#803115 21-Apr-2013 16:35

Snap user here, been on them for about a month, they seem OK so far. Havn't had to ring their helpdesk, but the guys I dealt with while getting connected were pretty good.

On the other hand I hear crap about Orcon's support services all the time.

No signature to see here, move along...

corksta

2385 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Subscriber

#803139 21-Apr-2013 17:02

I've just moved from Orcon to Vodafone so I can only comment on Orcon.

When Orcon work they work well, but international speeds and a lack of bandwidth seem to be fairly regular issues.

Tech support in the Phillipines is just a disaster. It seems like they work to a script, and the times I've asked questions ouitside of this 'script' they just can't answer it. Tech support via email is also similar.

Since moving to Vodafone I'm a lot happier.

Noodles

487 posts

Ultimate Geek

#803239 21-Apr-2013 19:54

I switched from Orcon to Snap 2 years ago and haven't looked back. When calling Orcon helpdesk I would be waiting about 15 minutes, Snap is either instant or within minutes.

We have Snap UFB at work and I can't fault the service. I can easily download at 12MB/s from international (multi threaded). The uncapped Youtube/Google is a nice feature as well. It's also worth mentioning that Snap has native IPv6 on all connections, I'm not sure Orcon has this.

surfisup1000

5288 posts

Uber Geek

#803260 21-Apr-2013 20:41

aros71:
Although I am still in contract with them, I looked around at other providers and have observed that Snap seems to be offering a much better value plan for UFB/Fibre

Snap are not all great. I connected to them last tuesday and my internet and phone are still out of action.

networkn

Networkn
30209 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#803263 21-Apr-2013 20:44

From what I can see Snap are having growing pains, their support, once extremely well thought of has taken a bit of a dive and provisioning is definitely not it's strongest suit from my experiences with customers who have signed up recently. There are some good people here trying to sort out issues that GZ users have, but if they aren't careful they will become the new "Orcon" who used to have great prices and service until they grew.

RalphFromSnap

776 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

Snap Internet

#803808 22-Apr-2013 17:13

Hi guys

Thanks for the (mostly) positive feedback regarding Snap services. We think we do a pretty good job and you'll find the vast majority of our customers really love the performance they receive, particularly those on the faster VDSL & UFB services. Having said that, we want to make sure that we continue to deliver the outstanding service that we've become well known for, and are doing a lot of work in that area at the moment.

surfisup1000 - the team have configured the replacement FritzBox and are sending it by overnight courier tonight.

networkn - sorry to hear that some of your customers have experienced a few issues when moving over to us. Good to see you're still recommending us to customers despite all of your other posts ;)

Cheers

Snap

0800 BROADBAND (276 232)
www.snap.net.nz

@SnapInternet on Twitter
Snap Internet on Facebook

Our Social Media Team:
^RO Ricky - Technical Lead
^AT Ashleigh - Retail Marketing Coordinator

sidefx

3639 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#803843 22-Apr-2013 18:15

Must say I've been a very happy VDSL user with snap for a number of months now; thumbs up from me.

"I was born not knowing and have had only a little time to change that here and there." | Electric Kiwi | Sharesies
- Richard Feynman

cliffhnz

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#804503 23-Apr-2013 19:45

Very happy with my Snap service so far. Excellent quality network wise and excellent customer service. Would happily recommend them (as I have been since I got mine) and am actively getting friends and customers onto them.