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chocaholic

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#121004 20-Jun-2013 19:18
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We live in a semi rural area so only get ADSL1(according to the Chorus website an upgrade is not planned in the next 5 years Cry). 

We have been with Orcon for years and have always managed to get a better deal as the years have gone by.  Our current contract finishes next month and cannot be renewed.  This time we will need to pay $20 more a month for a lesser bundle.

The new Genius Go looked pretty cool and was keen to try it out, however not worth it given we will now need to change providers. 

On the other hand we have found Orcon support less than satisfactory with support requests not being logged correctly or logged at all over the last couple of years.  Just last Friday we came home from overseas to find our phone not working.  I called them and went through all the tests and then they said they were logging the call with Chorus.  We called on Monday morning to follow up on progress only to be told they new nothing about our problem and they could not expedite the call - we would have to wait another 48 to 72 hours.  I called on Wednesday to see what was happening to be told that Chorus were due to look at the fault at 11am that day, only no one told us this.  Anyway they must have fixed it as the phone is now working but we never saw anyone or heard from anyone to check if it was working okay.  We were home all day.

Lets hope our new provider provides a better service.  Pretty worried about changing as previous experience has left us with weeks of pain while they got the broadband settings tweaked for us so we didn't lose connectivity every 5 minutes - the joys of living so far from the exchange.  Snap looks like the best option at the moment...

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Gilco2
1556 posts

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#840530 20-Jun-2013 19:26
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I went with Trustpower for phone on good deal and 2 months ago phone was useless as so much noise just couldnt use it.  Was a Friday 1pm.  I rang Trustpower on my mobile and they said someone will be out later in the day or at worst saturday or Sunday.  Well surprise a Chorus tech turned up at Friday 2pm and was all fixed by 2.30pm.  Very pleased with that service




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Nebbie
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  #840893 21-Jun-2013 11:08
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We called on Monday morning to follow up on progress only to be told they new nothing about our problem and they could not expedite the call - we would have to wait another 48 to 72 hours.  I called on Wednesday to see what was happening to be told that Chorus were due to look at the fault at 11am that day, only no one told us this.  Anyway they must have fixed it as the phone is now working but we never saw anyone or heard from anyone to check if it was working okay.


I see this happen all the time, The issue was possibly caused by a line fault up the road somewhere.
When this happens the RFS dates for faults and often is pushed to sometime in the future this is because often especially in rural areas all techs are working on getting everyone up and running at once.
This is something well out of the hands of orcon.... Not saying they did nothing wrong.... 




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sir1963
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  #848646 3-Jul-2013 11:13
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I wanted to shift to Orcon but struck a MAJOR problem.

We have 2 phone numbers (one for me and one for my partner) using Faxability (blessings of a "blended Family")

Its actually really convenient having the 2 numbers and we have a lot of things such as our property rentals set up using them so we are not willing to give up one or the other number.

Orcon will NOT support Faxability
Orcon will NOT give us 2 numbers

Now Orcon for their Genius/Orcon Go system must be running their own PABX system so I am al a loss as to why Orcon can not allow us to have 2 numbers and simply put a permanent call forward from one number to the other.
Mission Solved.

The Genius modem (if with iinet in Australia who call it a Bob modem) is capable of having 2 numbers and from what I could see also capable of having 2 differing SIP providers for each number. Orcon block this capability.
They also make it damned difficult to get your VOIP password unless you happen to know its Base64 encrypted and can be recovered through a settings dump. Their support people will not give it to you though apparently.

So I cancelled my port to Orcon and are looking at other options.

But Orcon has made it impossible for me to do business with them, all because with will not forward a phone number. 

Unfortunately UFB is years away and VDSL is too expensive




sbiddle
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  #848675 3-Jul-2013 12:06
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sir1963:
They also make it damned difficult to get your VOIP password unless you happen to know its Base64 encrypted and can be recovered through a settings dump. Their support people will not give it to you though apparently.


In defense of Orcon their Genius offering is a fully managed end to end VoIP product designed to deliver a PSTN replacement service. It's not designed so end users can tinker with things and break it.

Just because there are typically only 3 or 4 SIP settings required to make a connection work doesn't mean you've instantly got a SIP endpoint that's 100% compatible with the proxy it's registered to.

If you want to tinker with your settings move your voice to a provider that lets you do this.

michaelmurfy
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  #848682 3-Jul-2013 12:24
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sir1963:

Unfortunately UFB is years away and VDSL is too expensive



VDSL is not expensive...




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hamish225
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  #848687 3-Jul-2013 12:29
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snap let you have extra voip lines i've noticed, i presume that means having two numbers is an option, you could call them and tell them what you're looking for and see what they can do for you




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Nebbie
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  #848703 3-Jul-2013 13:04
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sbiddle:
If you want to tinker with your settings move your voice to a provider that lets you do this.


Yes, playing with your VoIP settings can be bad.
Worked with a ISP that allowed that and the amount of times customers play and broke stuff so bad its hard to support them via the phone.




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