I had always thought that 2 degrees broadband (formally Snap) was better than all the other ISPs i.e. telecom.  I have had a few minor stuff ups but normally fixed by the helpful people at the Christchurch call center.  That was until this nightmare.

We had two home phone lines on our account.  One was for Grandma to call on, the other was my wifes work number.  My wife is about to change jobs so a couple of fridays ago I rang up to cancel the second phone.

On sunday the weirdness started.  Landline didn't work so gave the helpful people a call.  It's been disconnected along with the other phone they said and you will have to get a new phone number.  No deal I said, Grandma will never cope.  Later that day the phone started working again.  All good I naively thought.

Monday the wife said the internet doesn't work so I rebooted the router, tried all the standard stuff.  Called the helpful 2 degrees people, went through the whole what lights are flashing routine, reprogrammed the router etc.  The finally decided it was a wiring fault so would have to log a ticket with Enable.

Next day no contact so my wife rang.  Time on hold...no progress...  That evening I rang, time on hold...no progress...

By this point the kids were spending lots of time outside and reading books (not such a bad thing).  My wife couldn't work from home and we were out of mobile data on our phones so I brought a 5gb Skinny data pack for our mobile hotspot for $60

Wednesday we are finally starting to make progress.  My wife rang during the day and after some time on hold got told they knew what the problem was and were working on it.  I rang in the evening and after some time on hold got a very apologetic bloke.  Sorry sir, we stuffed up.  When we put through the order to disconnect the second phone to Enable our staff member has stuffed up and put through an order to disconnect your internet instead.  Please have some mobile data to tide you over and when all this is sorted ring back for an account credit.  Thank god for sane people although we still didn't have out internet.

Thursday my wife rang again (you have to keep nagging with these things) and got someone from 2 degrees to ring someone in Enable and rush the re-connection through.  Thursday afternoon someone from Enable rang me to say they had just reconnected our fiber broadband.  All hail the internet gods for they are great.

Thursday evening I rang back to arrange for the account credit.  No problem sir I will lodge that with my supervisor and someone will contact you in one to two days.

No contact over the weekend so Monday I rang back.  No sir, there isn't a account credit, the mobile data you already received was your compensation.  Slightly annoyed by this point I asked for a call review of the last two calls because that was not what was agreed.

A couple of days later I got a voicemail from 2 degrees.  This was the first time they had contacted me during this whole drama and I couldn't tell what the message was.

Today I finally got around to ringing them back.  Sir, we did a call review and have credited you $4.50 for the time without service.  wtf, how can this be.

Called back, more time on hold...can I talk to the supervisor...on hold...told the whole sorry tale to him...thats all we can do sir.  After some painful negotiation I got them up to $35 which is less than the data pack we brought, let alone the time without service or the eight hours I spent on the phone during this drama or the fact that they denied ever offering an account credit in the first place.

So be warned, record any calls you make to the call center with an app on your phone, get the names of the people you talk to and check your billing carefully.  This wasn't the first billing stuff up I have had but it was the longest and most annoying one.  They still offer a good service and I understand mistakes will happen but they could at least compensate for the time and money that I spent due to their mistake.