So a week or more ago we had a massive lightning strike which, along with a few others in our street, took out our internet.

I placed a call to one of Orcon's staff, who despite their promises to return to a NZ based customer service team, was obviously in a call centre offshore. I explained the issues, the fact that our connection was down, and most importantly that when a phone was plugged into the jack-point a constant disconnect signal was audible.

Their instant reaction to that was "We will have to send a Chorus tech to your house"... I can hear you all echoing my own response - "The connection to the house is fine..." but no amount of carefully crafted explanation worked on their C/S rep.

Many many calls to them, including getting hold of someone actually in NZ (retention department seem the only one deemed worth retaining in NZ) but still no one who actually seems to understand what their job entails, or even someone there with a modicum of technical prowess. Seriously - no one knew what 'ping' referred to - un-fuc*ing-believable!

A few more days, and my patience was exhausted. We were told that we would have to wait till the 18th for a Chorus tech which really was the final straw.

On the 12th I organised a BigPipe account which was activated without issue and before the team at Orcon could even look our way..

Orcon - My message to you in an open forum. Sort your company out before you are no more than a memory, or a quirky story people tell at parties about their worst ISP. Employees of Orcon - How can you get up each day with a smile on your face knowing that the company you work for has plummeted so quickly from "exciting new ISP on the block" to a steaming pile of camel dung?

After being a loyal, paying customer since 2008 I now await my final account.