Another thread on the 2Degrees forum about contract law with penalty fees inspired me to write this.

We signed up for a broadband+landline+modem rental on a 1 year contract with Orcon at $99.95/month.

On the connection date the broadband was working but the landline wasn't. For several weeks we tried to get the issue resolved. We would sit in the telephone support queue for hours, talk to support which would log a ticket and then eventually we get a text message saying the issue was resolved and when we checked it wasn't. This happened 2 or 3 times and then we gave up.

Orcon was billing us for the full amount right from the start of the contract even though they were only partially supplying the services agreed to in the contract. During one of the support calls I asked for credit for the landline not working and was informed a note would be made against the account.

So after a few weeks we did not have the patience to battle with this any longer and just left it there with the understanding we would only see out the contract and never deal with Orcon again. We adapted to life without a landline and the only niggle was that we kept paying for a service we were not receiving.

Fast forward a few months and we started having wi-fi connection problems. I suspected there was a problem with the modem and because we had no desire to deal with the support people at Orcon again I called up the sales team to find out if we could terminate the contract early.

During this conversation I was informed that I would have to pay the full early termination fee, there will be no credit or consideration given for the landline issues and we will not be allowed to change the contract to broadband only without the landline.

Needless to say, we switched as soon as the contract expired and we are now happy BigPipe customers with no contracts.