Hi all,

Warning, long long post.

I've just made the move from Wellington to Masterton and was initially looking at a new fibre connection. 2degrees stated that the fibre connection would take too long, so we cancelled that order and opted for VDSL in the meantime. This is where the fun begins:

So over the last week I've been having tonnes of 'fun' with 2degreesbroadband. My initial connection date was sometime in December (my move in date being the 20th of Nov) but after a phone call to chorus this got moved forward to the 18th of November. I thought... cool! Thats damn fast, but its strange that 2degrees are saying that I don't even need to be present for the install. Every other VDSL provider has come in and installed some new cable and master splitter to a dedicated jackpoint for VDSL. I checked Sparks website, and they still do this. I check 2degrees website and there is NO mention of any special charges for a proper VDSL Install.. Not sure what wizbang magic they do but thought hey, I'll be connected by the time I move in, whats the issue!

So come move in day (20th Nov) I bust out the modem they sent and found they had it configured for fibre and did not come with a BT50 -> RJ11 cable... bummer. After finally getting a cable and changing the settings, still no sync.

I spent the next 5 days, every single day, on the phone with 2degrees, chorus, downer and the service provider downer sub-contract to figure out what the heck is going on and get some kind of connection. There is over 8 hours of call logs (I record every phone conversation I have...).

On Thursday (yesterday) I had a technician from chorus (faults guy) that came and left 2 minutes later stating he couldn't do anything because the job had been put down for ADSL and he had no VDSL gear to test. He said I needed to contact 2degrees and get another job put through as there was nothing he could do.

Today (Friday) we finally had some kind of positive outcome (after another 2+ hours on the phone), had some techs come out from a subcontractor of downer and fixed some fault at the cabinet.

Now comes the kicker, after ALL this (this has seriously eaten my whole week, not to mention the serious amount of data add-ons I have chewed because I am a software developer who NEEDS internet) 2degrees would only give me 2 days compensation on our bill AND the speeds are ABYSMAL!

The below is the best test I've gotten so far:



What I cannot work out is why 2degrees now cheap out and do not provide a proper VDSL install for their customers like all the other competitors on the market... It surely costs them MORE money to deal with a bazillion faults and/or support tickets regarding bad speeds and error rates?? Also if this is now standard practice for them, why is this not made more explicit on the website? I was never told that they cheap out and do not provide this service for their customers... The actual job that got logged for 'install' was a simple jumper at the cabinet, which costs $25, so where is the other $74 dollars going for that advertised $99 connection fee that I am paying for by being locked into a 12 month contract?