Let me first state that I had been a very satisfied Snap ADSL customer for over 7 years before they were bought out by 2 Degrees.
Sure, the connection may not always have been the fastest, but I always had good speeds and most of all, I always felt that Snap cared about its customers and provided the best possible customer support of any ISP in New Zealand.
Whenever I needed to contact support, I always had someone on the phone within 5 rings. And the person always provided quality support. Over the years, I had modems go weird, only to be replaced by better models at no charge. I had line termination issues in our previous house, which was a tricky problem and not an obvious one to solve. Snap got a Chorus technician over and helped resolve the problem at no charge. Whenever someone at work asked about my internet connection or provider, I would sing Snap's praises and highly recommended them to others. And I am pretty sure that I assisted Snap in acquiring a number of customers solely by word of mouth.
Fast forward to 2015. Snap becomes 2 Degrees and in their communications they enable existing Snap ADSL customers to go unlimited VDSL as that's their standard offering, all I had to is to convert my Snap contract to 2 Degrees. I call 2 Degrees, they ran the address checks on my home address and give me the all clear. I was told I was in a "good zone for VDSL". Awesome. I double check the Chorus website and it shows pretty much the same. So I say, let's do this. Fritzbox arrives, connection gets swapped at the exchange and I hook it all up and we're all good. I know that the line may need some adjusting over time so I leave it two weeks before starting to run any speed checks, or rather before I started to notice that things weren't as they should have been.
While my download speed is okay, my upload speed has plonked from 768 kb/s on ADSL to .... 512 kb/s. On VDSL. That's not right?
I look at the line spectrum in my Frtizbox and it shows no activity in the VDSL spectrum so it appears my line is acting like it's an ADSL connection, albeit with a high download speed.
So I ring 2 Degrees support. It takes well over an hour before I get through. The person will get some line checks done and promises me to call me back in two days. (Yes, I got him to confirm that I was going to get called back.) Of course, that never happened so I once again spend around 50 minutes in queue waiting to get through to the support desk.
The person at the other end then tells me that I'm too far from the exchange, that there is nothing they can do and that they won't open a call with Chorus because of this.
I confront this person with the fact that I was told by 2 Degrees that I was "in a good zone for VDSL" and that I was therefore sold a product that they cannot deliver. I also offer to PAY for a technician to come check things out, if it turns out that the wiring at my house is at fault.
All I want is good, proper upload speed as that it was I need for my work. I do not care so much about the download speed as I do not download movies, or any large files really. But I do need to upload files and greater upload speed also makes working on remote systems a lot smoother.
So the person, who is now starting to give me attitude, is telling me that there is nothing they can do and asks me what I want. (A decent connection would be nice, or at least taking this problem serious would be a start.) I remained remarkably polite during this awkward conversation.
So nothing happened. I logged a complaint with 2 Degrees as I was unsatisfied with the support provided and the lack of any tangible effort to resolve my problems. Nothing. Not a single response. Nada.
Of late, my upload speed decline down to 230 kb/s. Turning my Fritzbox on and off seems to help and the upload has crawled back to 538 kb/s now but it's nowhere near where it should be for VDSL.
At this stage, I am rather stuck because I do not see the point of logging repeated support calls if 2 Degrees is obviously not interested in providing any support. I could install a master filter, which unfortunately is easier said than done as it's located externally at the roof line of the phone rather than near the ground, but I really do not see much of a point in that unless I get confirmed from Chorus/2 Degrees that others in the immediate vicinity actually do achieve reasonable speeds. (again, I'm not expecting the world here.) And again, I have no issue with paying for technican support if the issue lies solely within the boundaries of my property.
What would be the best way forward? Is there a local technician in the Wellington area that is recommended? Could the Fritzbox be faulty? Did someone make a mistake at the Chorus end when switching my connection?
At this stage, I am considering cancelling 2 Degrees all together and switch to one of the smaller providers - just to get some decent support. Like Snap. Before it was bought out and had it's customer focussed culture assassinated.
