The non-existent fibre guarantee / a warning

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › The non-existent fibre guarantee / a warning

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NonprayingMantis

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#1570949 13-Jun-2016 12:27

sbiddle:

NonprayingMantis:

wow, so they have to have a 'legitimate reason' to not be happy?

If you're not happy you can leave, but guess who decides what counts as a legitimate reason?

Apparently Orcon get to decide!

Thats a pretty terrible guarantee IMHO.

Without knowing the full details it's impossible to know whether the install process (which seems to be the issue here) would have been any better had the OP chosen another RSP.

if Orcon can't guarantee the fibre experience, Orcon shouldn't advertise a 'fibre guarantee'.

The experience possibly (maybe even probably) would have been the same with another ISP, but other ISPs aren't claiming to guarantee that experience.

thewanderingv

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#1571133 13-Jun-2016 16:32

JamesL:

Should have listened to the advice given in the other thread and not gone with Orcon :/

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?ForumId=49&TopicId=195453#1543554

Yes, all of you get to enjoy basking in the glory of forum superiority. I humbly admit defeat.

MadEngineer

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#1571134 13-Jun-2016 16:32

Stay tuned for the "I can't get connected because I shouldn't have cancelled my orcon account" episode.

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thewanderingv

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#1571143 13-Jun-2016 16:38

MadEngineer: Stay tuned for the "I can't get connected because I shouldn't have cancelled my orcon account" episode.

No, the other RSP's *excellent* advice on how to do this in a no-tears way helped immensely. I have already switched providers. And having done that, it's zippier, and the support is infinitely better (which in a mathematical sense is a low bar, but you get what I mean).

Behodar

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#1571155 13-Jun-2016 16:49

NonprayingMantis:

sbiddle: Without knowing the full details it's impossible to know whether the install process (which seems to be the issue here) would have been any better had the OP chosen another RSP.

if Orcon can't guarantee the fibre experience, Orcon shouldn't advertise a 'fibre guarantee'.

The experience possibly (maybe even probably) would have been the same with another ISP, but other ISPs aren't claiming to guarantee that experience.

sbiddle was talking specifically about the installation, which isn't part of Orcon's guarantee.

Sideface

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#1571164 13-Jun-2016 17:02

Behodar:

NonprayingMantis:

sbiddle: Without knowing the full details it's impossible to know whether the install process (which seems to be the issue here) would have been any better had the OP chosen another RSP.

if Orcon can't guarantee the fibre experience, Orcon shouldn't advertise a 'fibre guarantee'.

The experience possibly (maybe even probably) would have been the same with another ISP, but other ISPs aren't claiming to guarantee that experience.

sbiddle was talking specifically about the installation, which isn't part of Orcon's guarantee.

I have no loyalty to Orcon (I left them several years/several take-overs ago), but ...

How can Orcon be expected to "guarantee" that another company - the notoriously inefficient Chorus monopoly - will do a painless, timely install?

They can only "guarantee" the service that they provide themselves, which excludes installation.

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thewanderingv

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#1571174 13-Jun-2016 17:29

+1

I have no loyalty to Orcon (I left them several years/several take-overs ago), but ...

How can Orcon be expected to "guarantee" that another company - the notoriously inefficient Chorus monopoly - will do a painless, timely install?

They can only "guarantee" the service that they provide themselves, which excludes installation.

Agreed. But when:

1. An Orcon member of staff commits to making contact with Chorus to intermediate on behalf of the customer, only to find out (verifiably) that nothing like that ever happened

2. When an Orcon member of staff kindly calls me the date before my connection date to let me know that, "on our side we have provisioned everything and we're ready to go - all we need is a green light on your ONT - you're configured and ready to go", and it turns out that my account was not configured or provisioned on the back-end once the ONT light switched on, adding another 2 hours to an already painful installation

3. When you receive an email from an Orcon staff member quoting communication with Chorus, and it turns out that the information was entirely wrong

4. When Orcon sends the router to the wrong address, and you have to wait 1 hour on the phone to let Orcon know, only to be told that they have no way to fix the problem, and then you spend another hour with the courier trying to sort the mess out,

Then all of those failures are entirely within Orcon's direct span of control, even if they occurred at the "installation" end of the connection cycle. Even though I cancelled my account under the guarantee for reasons entirely attributable to events after Chorus handed over my account, all of these should be eligible experiences for a customer to judge the Orcon "experience" as poor. Just my two cents...

dt

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#1571190 13-Jun-2016 17:56

Should it not be the ISP that drives Chorus to deliver a stress free install on behalf of the customer?

Reading the OP's other thread it looks like they made him do all the running around and following up and did nothing to help the situation and only causes him undeserved headaches.

Just because their clause is written in a savvy way that makes it easy to wriggle their way out of the commitment to their customers doesn't make it right.. they should give just taken it on the chin, admit they've delivered a poor experience to the customer and let him off the hook.

They don't seem to grasp the negative impact cases like this can potentially have on future business for them. No doubt if anyone ever asks the OP about an ISP.. hes going to tell them to stay as far away from Orcon as humanly possible.

sbiddle

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#1571203 13-Jun-2016 18:15

dt:

Should it not be the ISP that drives Chorus to deliver a stress free install on behalf of the customer?

Reading the OP's other thread it looks like they made him do all the running around and following up and did nothing to help the situation and only causes him undeserved headaches.

I don't think there is a single RSP immune to rants about the UFB processes. Pretty much every provider would have been trashed at least once in a GZ thread about UFB installs. We don't not possible to know the full details but clearly the install process didn't go well, and this could have easily been just as bad with the RSP that the OP has now moved to.

At the end of the day I read the guarantee as being about the fibre experience once installed, not the install experience. No RSP in NZ would be dumb enough to place any form of guarantee on the UFB install process.

Yes some aspects were clearly Orcon, but right now the UFB experience can still be incredibly painful despite Chorus and RSP's trying to make it painless because it's in their interests to do so.

thewanderingv

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#1571276 13-Jun-2016 20:12

At the end of the day I read the guarantee as being about the fibre experience once installed, not the install experience. No RSP in NZ would be dumb enough to place any form of guarantee on the UFB install process.

And I agree with this. And my request for cancellation is based on my experience after I was connected. But in choosing to take the guarantee offer, I have chosen a significantly lower tolerance threshold (which I'm fully within my rights to do) for what constitutes an "experience failure". And I had just that, when I had to call Orcon support after my connection didn't work even after it was provisioned and running. Once I was connected, my connection soon after slowed down significantly as a result of service issues. On those experiences, I might have been tempted to "let it slide", but knowing fully how poorly I was dealt with as a customer prior to the installation, I've chosen to walk away at the first sign of poor service.

It is just too costly for me (time, energy, patience) to have to suffer any further service degradations that require me to use their support. On average, it is just plain awful.

linw

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#1571427 14-Jun-2016 08:59

It's really amazing how experiences can differ. I've been on Orcon fibre since Aug 2012 and have had no big dramas and have had good service from Orcon employees, especially those on this forum.

In Dec last year I had a broken fibre at the cabinet intermittent problem (obviously not Orcon's fault) and the three calls I made were answered in under a minute. Again, a couple of weeks ago I rang to get a telephone call waiting removed and was answered in under a minute.

I certainly haven't experienced anything remotely resembling hour long waits. Perhaps I have been lucky but there are many complaints about long waits on other ISP threads.

Just thought I would add a bit of balance to the Orcon bashing.

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malpasolan

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#1575814 17-Jun-2016 15:21

Perhaps you should post that to their Facebook page too, because it's sure needed there...

thewanderingv

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#1581318 27-Jun-2016 17:55

linw:

It's really amazing how experiences can differ. I've been on Orcon fibre since Aug 2012 and have had no big dramas and have had good service from Orcon employees, especially those on this forum.

In Dec last year I had a broken fibre at the cabinet intermittent problem (obviously not Orcon's fault) and the three calls I made were answered in under a minute. Again, a couple of weeks ago I rang to get a telephone call waiting removed and was answered in under a minute.

I certainly haven't experienced anything remotely resembling hour long waits. Perhaps I have been lucky but there are many complaints about long waits on other ISP threads.

Just thought I would add a bit of balance to the Orcon bashing.

It's great you had a pleasant experience - as I assume many people do. There's no Orcon bashing here - just one individual poor experience, compounded repeatedly by a series of customer non-centric approaches to dealing with an issue. And to the extent that an Orcon staff member denies the existence of a contractual clause viewable on their website, any criticism for that is just fair game.

Anyway, after @bameron's kind assistance, the Orcon accounts team looked into this issue, and have decided to waive the ETF (after a heated initial discussion where they decided to apply the ETF). I think it's the right thing to do, and so kudos to Orcon. But there's room to tighten the fibre guarantee language to make things clear and contractually equitable, to enable customers to fully fully understand what the clause means.

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