I would like to give Orcon some money, a fair bit of money vs their average dsl user some might say.

I live in a sleepout/granny flat, the main house has (or should i say had before all of this started) a dsl connection with vodafone.

I moved in and i don't tend to play well with others in regards to sharing an adsl2 connection so decided to get my own for out here. I checked the prices and Orcon seems to have a good price per megabyte ratio and they have their own gear at my exchange. Sweet. So i went and filled in the online form and specified a new connection on a separate line.

A few days later i was emailed for more information and i duly rang in and specified new line, no splitter to go to sleepout.

A few days later i was emailed again to say that i need to ok the connection fee of up to $250 which i duly rang in and confirmed.

Each time i rang in i made sure that they had notes along the lines of "chorus guy ring me first as i need to take time off work to allow access to the house", i was assured that everything was fine.

A few days later my flatmate from the house rocks up and says "Hey dude why has my vodafone connection got an orcon IP address?".

I rang in and after being told it was my fault and me going through the steps with them and proving that out was told that "sorry for the mistake we'll just cancel the current connection and redo the order". To which i replied "like hell, that will drop service on the line that you potentially illegally took off my flatmate, you will sign up a new user and leave the existing line the hell alone until vodafone can take it back under their control".

So, helpdesk guy takes the details where again i specify a new connection on a separate line along with being contacted before the work is commenced.

That afternoon i get a "welcome to orcon" email.

A few days later i was emailed for more information and i duly rang in and specified new line, no splitter to go to sleepout.

A few days later i was emailed again to say that i need to ok the connection fee of up to $250 which i duly rang in and confirmed.

I was assured that i would get a call before the work was commenced.

A couple of days later i get a new "welcome to orcon" email for the new username, I ring in and say "Hi apparently i'm connected to you guys on a new line" the helpdesk person says well you are i asked since when and was told since yesterday morning, i then pushed a bit further and asked if the username happened to have changed from the first one around about the same time and after a long silent "DOH" moment (i can only assume) this was confirmed. I asked if it was normal practice to simply swap cables over on an existing line when asked for a new connection and new line and was told it was not.

I asked to speak to a manager and was told i was, i vented a little, sobbed a little and pleaded for a simple new line to be connected so i could have a bright green link light and eventually a madly flashing ppp light. Ok so this time they get a little proactive and call me twice during the week to clarify everything (i think this would have been clarified more than butter now but i felt happy and warm inside that they cared enough to call me) and a i get a phone call on wednesday afternoon telling me that they had a technician coming on friday morning (today).

I barely slept a wink last night in anticipation of the glorious shade of green i could expect from the link light on my router and the technician arrived this morning, first thing i asked was "please tell me you are here to connect the second pair to a jackpoint in the sleepout and liven it all up with some discrete multi tone goodness", "Not according to this bit of paper mate" which reads "work required, relocate jackpoint to granny flat".

While he was here we checked that there was in fact a second pair coming into the house as noone knew up til now and the demarc is under the house and i don't do under houses and we both bitched and moaned about how crap everything has become since deregulation and separation. I thanked him for his time and felt sorry that as he gets paid "per code" he doesn't get paid crap for what he just had to go through.

I just rang orcon and asked the poor guy on the end of the phone to get a manager to talk to me, he wanted to help but his command of english would have only been a stumbling block for not such a simple fixit call.

Now i used to work at telecom handling adsl screwups and faults and have never seen anything like this from any isp before (apparently they are more common now), i asked for everything the correct way, double checked at every stage of the way what kind of service do the 'common folk' get when they don't know what to ask for?

Anyway as this is a discussion forum, please advise:

Would you a. go somewhere else? where and why?, b. make them get it right whilst possibly doing your brain a nasty damage? c. don't worry its just the fact that everybody is out to get you, invest in more tinfoil head wear, i think i hear the black helicopters circling overhead right now in fact,

Also amusingly vodafone is apparently unable to take the flatmates line back from orcon at the moment wtf.