Sorry, this is a wall of text, skip to bottom for TLDR version.

I used to be on Snap and they were great. Until 2Degrees bought them and things went down hill fast. My contract expired and they wanted increase my rates/move me to another plan which wouldn’t work for me. I need to run my own servers (web/email) and needed a service without the “fair use” which excludes running your own servers for commercial use. My wife and I both work from home and I have my own dev blog/indie game website. (Not hosting downloads before you ask)

Anyway, I looked around and Orcon was one of the only ISP left who don’t have a “fair use policy.” A month in advance I called and scheduled installation (switch over from fibre 2D to Orcon) which I was assured would happen first thing in the morning on the 7th. Of course, I didn’t believe that and wife took the day off work because we knew it would be down most of the day. What we didn’t expect is it would be down over a week later.

At 6:02am our 2D connection went down. I swapped out the router, a fritzbox 7490 with another 7490 from Orcon. While the ONT had a green optical light, the Fritzbox never got an IP from the ONT. It stayed that way all day and at 4:45pm I called tech support. They told me the connection was setup at 11am and should already be working... but it wasn’t. They logged a fault and said it would be fixed later that day as support works until 10pm and T2 until 7pm.

Next day, wife no longer has day off and we are still down. She has to call in and take another leave day. I called Orcon for an update. Help desk claims their systems are down and they cannot even lookup my account information. So I call back again in the afternoon. Again, their systems are not working. However, they are escalating the issue to Tier 2 support and they will contact me by end of day.

Next day (Thursday), again wife needs to take another day of leave, her work is not happy as they are now backlogged. I call support in the morning, this time they say they cannot tell what is wrong and they don’t have an answer back from T2 support. I asked to be transferred to T2 support but they cannot. They only have email access to contact T2. (T1 is in Manila btw) They again assure me they will get back to me. I call again in the afternoon and they still have no idea what is wrong. They now say Chorus says the ONT is down. I tell them I have a green optical link and this is not a new connection. (Optical light would be red it it was down). I give them the serial number and MAC address of my ONT.

Friday the 10th, my wife’s work is very unhappy. They insist that she take off until Wednesday of next week so they can schedule the office workload. This daily unknown if she can work is causing problems. At this point, with no answer and no ideas of what is wrong I call Orcon to cancel. Their accounts department, you guess it, also in Manila, says it will take up to 3 days for them to call back. As of today, the 15th their “retention department” still has NOT called me back.

I go to the library to try and find another service. Sadly, they restrict time to 30m and not able to find a good service without fair use/commercial clauses. But I did find a number of Orcon business. Out of desperation I call that hoping they change my account to business (at extra cost of course) to get better service. Problem is that CallPlus does their accounts for business instead. Thankful, after explaining the problem to their business manager, he walks down two floors to talk to manager for T2 support at Orcon.

Someone named Chris calls me later that afternoon. He is able finally open my account and says he will contact Chorus and get it sorted. Few hours I get a call back. He has sorted the problem and I now have a dynamic IP. I reminded him we ordered a static and then has to get that setup. It’s not 16:45 on Friday. I tell him that I still don’t have phone line ported over or configured and he says their team is still porting my number over and it will be up very soon. I asked if he could give a contact number because he is the first person I’ve talked with and he says no. He did give me an email address @vocusgroup instead. Later friday evening I finally have my static IP and internet but no phone.

Friday 2038, I get the first text message saying my fault is fixed. I still don’t have a phone line configured.

Friday 2250, I get another text saying my install is complete. Nope, still no phone.

As expected, nothing changes over the weekend. I rebooted the FB a few times no changes.  For the tech people out there, they just needed to send a TR-069 message from their ACS but God help anyone trying to explain that to a T1 support person.

Monday morning, we have internet, but still no phone line. I tried to email Chris but no luck. Either I wrote it down wrong or he gave me a fake address. I call T1 support, again. They say check if my phone is plugged in and try again. I try to explain the problem and they just keep doing the same steps over. He says they must still be porting the number and will contact me to tomorrow.

Tuesday morning (I work nights) at 0358am all packets outside of Ocron network stop working. I can ping their DNS servers but cannot resolve any names or even get out of the network. At 0420am still no internet and I give up for the night and go to bed. (Seems it came back at around 04:45am according to my logs. Hoping maybe they fixed my phone line overnight but nope.

Tuesday, 12:51pm I get a call from T1 support, they say install is complete and it must be my modem. So they now want me to do a factory reset. I told them I’ll have to do it after 1700 because we need the internet for work. And please call back tomorrow because I’m sure this won’t fix things.

Tuesday night I do the factory reset on the FB and reboot. I get the same static IP and still no phone line configured.

Wednesday, today I call T1 support again. They say there is no fault logged and I have to go through the entire troubleshooting steps with the new tech. !@#$!@#$ So now they log a new fault. I told them I talked with support yesterday and they told me to do a factory reset. He doesn’t believe me and keeps asking what button I pushed on outside of modem.  I told him I logged in and did it and asked to please forwarded to T2 support. He refuses and says he has to put me on hold for several minutes. Finally comes back and says he is escalating this to T2 support.  He then asks for the serial number of my FB modem which I gave him.  

At this point I still have no phone line, still no call back from cancellation department six days later. I’ve never had such horrible and incompetent support service from a company before. Does anyone know of a service that has better support? My website is very low traffic and while I’m using it for “commercial use” my actual downloads are hosted by 3rd party payment vendor.  It's really a dev blog and landing page for my games.

Sadly, I should have known better about Orcon.  Back in 2010 I tried to go with them for VDSL.  They couldn't get me setup for over a month due to port issues.  I cancelled the install order after a month with no service and went with spark who got me up in a week.  Months later I find out Orcon sent me to Baycorp for debt collection for unpaid bills I never got of service I never had.  I thought surely a simple fibre switch over of existing service wouldn't be bad and maybe the DSL issue was a one-off.  Oh how I was wrong.

TLDR: I had Snap fibre but was forced to change.  Tried signup of Orcon gigabit 1000/500 and it was worst mistake I could have made.  Does anyone have another fibre service with no fair use policy?