Fault & Rebate Policy

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › Fault & Rebate Policy

rprosser

36 posts

Geek
+1 received by user: 9

#208345 7-Feb-2017 20:09

Just wanting an opinion.

Recently we had a broadband fibre fault that took about 4 days to fix. So 4 days without broadband or landline phone. When I asked for a rebate on my bill for the 4 days without service I was told that 2 degrees do "not offer compensation for faults that are beyond their control."

I went back and mentioned the CGA and that I was only looking for a rebate - not full compensation for the mobile data & voice we had to use otherwise.

Same response.

"Thanks for the email. We do our best to work with the relevant parties and get the problems fixed ASAP, which we have done in this case. However we are sorry that as this has not been an error made by 2degrees we are unable to provide time without services. Hope you would understand."

Emailed back again, complaining that, while it may not be their error, it wasn't mine either, and they were quite welcome to claim against Enable if they wanted.

Got exactly the same response again.

Now, as I understand it I could take it to the disputes tribunal, but not really worth it due to the application $45 cost and small rebate requested.

Does anyone have a similar story, or opinion or idea?

I would add that the fault was fixed and involved testing the system, blowing in a new fibre pair from the cabinet and re-splicing. So 4 days is not unreasonable especially as it was over a weekend. They (Downer-Enable) communicated well and turned up when they said they would. No problems with them.

rprosser

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dejadeadnz

2394 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 2287
Inactive user

#1716816 7-Feb-2017 21:16

rprosser:

"Thanks for the email. We do our best to work with the relevant parties and get the problems fixed ASAP, which we have done in this case. However we are sorry that as this has not been an error made by 2degrees we are unable to provide time without services. Hope you would understand." Emailed back again, complaining that, while it may not be their error, it wasn't mine either, and they were quite welcome to claim against Enable if they wanted. Got exactly the same response again. Now, as I understand it I could take it to the disputes tribunal, but not really worth it due to the application $45 cost and small rebate requested. Does anyone have a similar story, or opinion or idea? I would add that the fault was fixed and involved testing the system, blowing in a new fibre pair from the cabinet and re-splicing. So 4 days is not unreasonable especially as it was over a weekend. They (Downer-Enable) communicated well and turned up when they said they would. No problems with them. rprosser

They can't contract out of the CGA. Section 43(4) of the CGA makes it an offence under s 13 of the Fair Trading Act (which proscribes against false and misleading representations in trade) for an entity to purport to contract out of the CGA. Of course, all this assumes you are a home/personal user. If you're in trade/business, that's another matter.

@2degreesCare this is the second time in less than 6 months where your company has potentially behaved quite disgracefully in law towards a customer. Come and make things right -- the law or not, it's pretty rich to make someone pay for something that they couldn't use. You can go and duke it out with your own service provider.

OP: I suggest you post on their Facebook wall, do it calmly and cite all the relevant statutory provisions cited above (the full texts can be found at www.legislation.govt.nz) if you are a home user. Ask for the complaint to be escalated to a compliance manager or their Head of Legal. Then make sure you tell everyone you know that 2Degrees think they are above the law. And I speak from the POV of being a former practising lawyer and a senior compliance/commercial manager at various corporates. I would seriously discipline the staff members concerned if I were working for 2Degrees, assuming they ever had adequate Fair Trading Act training in the first place.

Timmay: the OP's contract is irrelevant, provided he is a personal/home user.

lxsw20

3689 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 2174

Subscriber

#1716949 7-Feb-2017 23:50

Sure it may be in their contract that they don't have to compensate, but it's a good faith gesture. My folks had a 4-5 day VDSL outage with another large ISP and ended up getting a free month of internet. It wasn't even the ISP's fault, was a patching issue at the Chorus end.