Best way to be notified of outages on the Chorus network

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › Best way to be notified of outages on the Chorus network

gcorgnet

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#303936 21-Mar-2023 16:25

Hi all,
I'm not typically one to kick up a fuss online but I got annoyed this morning...

Sitting there browsing on my phone this morning when the internet stopped working and I did what any other normal person would do:
- Disabled Wifi to check that yes, 4G was working and therefore the fault was with my house's internet and not my phone
- Checked that my desktop was also offline to further rule out my phone
- Checked the 2Degrees status page to confirm there was no known fault currently
- Checked the router was on and showing on its diagnosis page that the it couldn't reach the internet.
- Checked the Chorus box and realised the LOS light was solid red, at which point I unplugged it for 30s and turned it back on... no dice

At this stage, I had confidence that the issue was outside of my house and ... sigh... I started dialing 2degrees number...

After over 20min on hold (I rang at 8am, when the lines were supposed to open and was told I was first on the queue, for the whole time) I spoke to a gentleman who was well intent on having me try out all sort of things to rule out my modem..
I was on the school drop off run so couldn't do this and also considering I had done all the checks previously, I had little patience for that..

He then proceeded to read the T&Cs to me, essentially outlining that if Chorus can't find a fault, I'm on the hook for more than $100...
After I pushed back, he put me on hold, only to come back literrally 30 sec later and tell me that he could see there was a planned outage in my area...

At this point I pretty much lost my shit at him (I know it's not his fault but since I was due to WFH, having no internet was a bit of a major) and started asking him why no one thought of letting me know about the planned outage... (He said that was on the Chorus side)

So my question to this groups is this:

Should I expect to be notified about planned outage on the Chorus network? Are telcos expected to relay the information? if not, is there any other place I could check, other than the 2Degreees status page to know about known outages instead of waste my time on the phone?

toejam316

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#3052938 21-Mar-2023 16:32

This one has been discussed at length a few times now, and there's no real consensus.

I'm of the opinion that no, it's simply impractical to contact every customer during every outage, planned or otherwise. It's a best effort service, if you want that sort of treatment you should pay for an SLA. If your internet is that important to your income, pay for an SLA. You'll probably find that maybe going into the office, or working over your back-up service which you should also have for your source of primary income is the better choice once you see the prices for same day restoration targets.

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gcorgnet

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#3052940 21-Mar-2023 16:37

Thanks for your reply. I respect that and understand that a 100% uptime is not realistic and I would never be in a position where purchasing an SLA would make finaincial sense.

What I tried to illustrate though, is that I took many steps to diagnose the issue, consult the ISP status page, etc.. and yet none of that information was available to me and my only options was to either go to the office hoping that my internet will fix itself or spend 30min on hold with my telco..

I'm not expecting my personal phone call or anything but it sounds like Vector does manage to give people a heads up when they plan an outage. Why couldn't Chorus?

Failing that, how about providing a centralised place where one can look up an address to check if there's a known fault or planned outage?

mentalinc

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#3052943 21-Mar-2023 16:41

Make this website step #2 moving forward, will solve everything else 90% of the time.

https://www.chorus.co.nz/outages

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gcorgnet

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#3052945 21-Mar-2023 16:44

mentalinc:

Make this website step #2 moving forward, will solve everything else 90% of the time.

https://www.chorus.co.nz/outages

how choice! Thanks for this, I didn't know about this page (had a quick search this morning on my phone but it only brought up the "can you get Fibre at your address" plan)

Nevermind my rant above though... assuming that map gets the correct info, I should have been able to spare myself the pain of calling 2D.

Thanks!

Wheelbarrow01

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#3053066 21-Mar-2023 22:04

I find it very hard to believe that Chorus had a planned outage at 8am on a weekday. They are normally in the middle of the night.

Interested to hear what the Chorus outages page said about your address. Can you advise?

The views expressed by me are not necessarily those of my employer Chorus NZ Ltd

danfaulknor

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#3053076 21-Mar-2023 23:31

Wheelbarrow01:

I find it very hard to believe that Chorus had a planned outage at 8am on a weekday. They are normally in the middle of the night.

All of our Chorus planned outages for customers that have been for line card upgrades -> Hyperfibre have been during the day

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gcorgnet

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#3053133 22-Mar-2023 08:12

Wheelbarrow01:

I find it very hard to believe that Chorus had a planned outage at 8am on a weekday. They are normally in the middle of the night.

Interested to hear what the Chorus outages page said about your address. Can you advise?

Unfortunately no as I didn't know to check it...

But the 2D guy on the phone took about 30s after he put me on hold to come back and tell me there was a planned outage.
My internet was back by 9am, as he said, too

SirHumphreyAppleby

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#3053182 22-Mar-2023 08:40

toejam316:

I'm of the opinion that no, it's simply impractical to contact every customer during every outage, planned or otherwise. It's a best effort service, if you want that sort of treatment you should pay for an SLA.

I am of the opinion that best effort means just that. IF there is to be an outage, it needs to not cause disruption unless there is no other option. Anything less is not best effort. Notifying customers for planned outages is entirely reasonable.

A SLA is a guarantee of service being supplied to an agreed standard. Lack of an SLA does not mean a service can't be provided for arbitrary reasons.