I phoned 200 tonight and heard a message about a 2degrees system outage and thought I must have heard incorrectly when the message stated that hopefully systems would be functional by Wednesday (i.e. 6 days away).
Alas when I tried to login to the online website I learned that many systems were down and the link https://www.2degreesmobile.co.nz/help-and-support/mobile/service-status/#tab1
explained that many were going to be unavailable for approximately 1 week!
This amazes me in 2017. It suggests poor planning, cost minimisation with respect to upgrade resource, or at least a blatant disregard for customer service.
While there are some workarounds for some unavailable functions the idea that a supposedly serious mobile communications provider who has pitched itself as being a serious contender in the business marker can tell account customers that their balances and usage may not be accurate and may not update for a week is somewhat laughable.
At a minimum 2degrees should in my opinion be extending due dates by at least 10 days if they think a week of incorrect data is acceptable as customers should be given time to review their accounts once the system is back online and the data is updated.
Similarly for prepay customers - how are you supposed to find out your credit expiry date as neither the *100*1# nor BAL to 233 workarounds actually supply the credit expiry date. In a similar fashion 2degrees should really extend all prepay credit expiry dates which fall from 15.2.2017 to 25.2.2017 by ten days to allow prepay customers to determine when they need to topup. Why should people have to topup just because they suspect that their credit MAY be due to expire during the outage period.
I have previously developed, supported, and upgraded a significant healthcare IT system which had real-time patient information and was networked across multiple sites. Whenever I managed an upgrade I considered a 1hour outage as unacceptable - I could certainly have had more sleep if I had been able to take the system down for a week but this was impractical and to be honest would have been completely unnecessary as we always planned for minimum downtime. I have never seen any of the major Banks take their systems down for a week for planned upgrade and I really hope that 2degrees realises that such a lengthy upgrade is really unacceptable for customers and reviews its processes around such upgrades as the impression it gives is either that they are not a serious reliable service provider or that they don't consider customers when they 'plan' such lengthy outages.