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samo

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#105987 16-Jul-2012 11:50
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Hi,

I recently moved from west Auckland to Te Arai, half way between Wellsford and Mangawhai, I signed up with Vodafone and was told there was not enough room in the exchange. Frustrating but OK we were put on the waiting list and were 3rd in the queue.

2 months later we were still waiting but were first in the queue, progress.

Our landlord thought he could get Slingshot to connect us faster and so he rang them, Slingshot couldn't find our address so we told our landlord our customer number who forwarded that to Slingshot, They replied in a few days saying they could not connect us faster and so we left it at that, still waiting on Vodafone, or so we thought.

A week or so later I called Vodafone for an update to be told we were no longer their customer and Slingshot had taken over our address

Slingshot would not talk to me as I was no the owner of the account, I had to get my landlord who was in Australia to call and authorise me. I found out since Slingshot had my name and customer number they took it upon themselves to replace my account with my landlords, without any consent from me

I am now stuck at 4th in line waiting for broadband at the back of the queue with an estimated connection date of April next year some time

I am forced to use a Vodem stick hanging in the window which gets reception a few hours a day(weather dependant).

So where to from here? I had no intention to join Slingshot but cannot leave now as I would be at the back of the queue again, paying for a land-line and overpriced 3G data that I can only get 20% of the time.

I find it unacceptable that Slingshot could remove my account and replace it with a different persons name without my consent.

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JoeM
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  #656390 16-Jul-2012 11:55
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Sounds to me like your Landlord signed up for services at that address, i.e the account isnt yours so nothing was hijacked.

SS cannot take over a 'pending customer' as until the services are connected it is first come first served.

If you didnt ask Voda to stop tring to connect you then I think you issue is with them not Slingshot.

Cheers,




Joe M.
Slingshot Technical Centre Manager



wellygary
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  #656395 16-Jul-2012 12:00
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Other than complaining to Slingshot, (but given you are not a customer, you scope here may be limited)
I think your next option would be to go to the Telecommunications Disputes resolution service, 

http://www.tdr.org.nz/


Slingshot are members, so they can be asked by this organisation to explain their actions, 

Nothing is going to get your spot in the original queue back, as Chorus will have allocated that spot to the next customer, but at least you might get some explanation from Slingshot as to what actually went on with  your original request for provisioning from VF, 

VF are also members of the TDR

ubergeeknz
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Vocus

  #656398 16-Jul-2012 12:00
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samo:Slingshot would not talk to me as I was no the owner of the account, I had to get my landlord who was in Australia to call and authorise me. I found out since Slingshot had my name and customer number they took it upon themselves to replace my account with my landlords, without any consent from me


Someone calling up and telling them your name, address and customer number, and that you want to move across to them, is probably adequate in terms of "authorisation".  That's all they would need to tell Vodafone in order to have them cancel your account and hand it over to them.

If you want to cancel the churn then you'll need to call them and tell them that.  Good luck!



JoeM
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  #656400 16-Jul-2012 12:02
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wellygary: Other than complaining to Slingshot, (but given you are not a customer, you scope here may be limited)
I think your next option would be to go to the Telecom Disputes resolution service, 

http://www.tdr.org.nz/


Slingshot are members, so they can be asked by this organisation to explain their actions, 

Nothing is going to get your spot in the original queue back, as Chorus will have allocated that spot to the next customer, but at least you might get some explanation from Slingshot.



TDR wont do anything unless there is a formal complaint logged and it is deadlocked for 6 weeks. also, They would need to be a costomer for that.




Joe M.
Slingshot Technical Centre Manager

wellygary
8312 posts

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  #656403 16-Jul-2012 12:05
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JoeM: TDR wont do anything unless there is a formal complaint logged and it is deadlocked for 6 weeks. also, They would need to be a costomer for that.


They are customers ( or at least to-be customers ) of VF, so they could lodge a complaint with them, wait for it to be deadlocked and go via that route, ( they should tell VF why they are really wanting to get Slingshot's explanation when they lodge their VF complaint) 

samo

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  #656411 16-Jul-2012 12:23
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ubergeeknz:
samo:Slingshot would not talk to me as I was no the owner of the account, I had to get my landlord who was in Australia to call and authorise me. I found out since Slingshot had my name and customer number they took it upon themselves to replace my account with my landlords, without any consent from me


Someone calling up and telling them your name, address and customer number, and that you want to move across to them, is probably adequate in terms of "authorisation".  That's all they would need to tell Vodafone in order to have them cancel your account and hand it over to them.

If you want to cancel the churn then you'll need to call them and tell them that.  Good luck!


Yea I get that if I was changing from Vodafone to Slingshot, but I wasn't, it was being transferred to a different name. I could for example see someone's customer number, call up right now, cancel their account, and change their entire line to my name, with no broadband and there's nothing they could do to stop it.

I am not looking to raise a formal complaint, just think its screwed up how this happened..

mercutio
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  #656428 16-Jul-2012 12:59
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don't let other people screw with the process next time.



 
 
 

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ubergeeknz
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Vocus

  #656470 16-Jul-2012 13:38
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samo: Yea I get that if I was changing from Vodafone to Slingshot, but I wasn't, it was being transferred to a different name. I could for example see someone's customer number, call up right now, cancel their account, and change their entire line to my name, with no broadband and there's nothing they could do to stop it.


Yes, you very well could I imagine.  The expectation is that other people don't know your account number.



mercutio
1392 posts

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  #656473 16-Jul-2012 13:40
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ubergeeknz:
samo: Yea I get that if I was changing from Vodafone to Slingshot, but I wasn't, it was being transferred to a different name. I could for example see someone's customer number, call up right now, cancel their account, and change their entire line to my name, with no broadband and there's nothing they could do to stop it.


Yes, you very well could I imagine.  The expectation is that other people don't know your account number.



There have actually been cases of hijacked connections in the past.  There's very little security.


ubergeeknz
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Vocus

  #656476 16-Jul-2012 13:44
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mercutio:
ubergeeknz:
samo: Yea I get that if I was changing from Vodafone to Slingshot, but I wasn't, it was being transferred to a different name. I could for example see someone's customer number, call up right now, cancel their account, and change their entire line to my name, with no broadband and there's nothing they could do to stop it.


Yes, you very well could I imagine.  The expectation is that other people don't know your account number.



There have actually been cases of hijacked connections in the past.  There's very little security.



I can believe it, but obviously not often enough to trigger a review of the process.

mercutio
1392 posts

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  #656486 16-Jul-2012 13:49
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ubergeeknz:
mercutio:
ubergeeknz:
samo: Yea I get that if I was changing from Vodafone to Slingshot, but I wasn't, it was being transferred to a different name. I could for example see someone's customer number, call up right now, cancel their account, and change their entire line to my name, with no broadband and there's nothing they could do to stop it.


Yes, you very well could I imagine.  The expectation is that other people don't know your account number.



There have actually been cases of hijacked connections in the past.  There's very little security.



I can believe it, but obviously not often enough to trigger a review of the process.


Take a look at threads like:

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=49&topicid=85612

I've heard of it happening by accident when working on someone elses line, suspiciously from telemarketers, and I've experienced a bizzare outage myself when I had a faulty install where the phone didn't work but net did - then phone would not ring but would call out, then got fixed and then net dropped.

It's probably Chorus's fault 2/3rds of the time and process/accidental 1/3rd of the time.

Surely it's hard to fix it when it's Chorus's fault as there's no incentive for them to not make mistakes, and they operate to a budget.  But process should be a lot easier to get fixed?

It can be pretty hard to tell who's fault it is.  Like when cabinet migrations take the phone/net down for 4+ hours during the middle of the day, which happened to me a couple of times.  Although I only noticed one of them.

I suppose what's really needed is some kind of impartial authorisation place that does lock codes, kind of like a bond.  Maybe it should have a bond too.

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