I have been with Orcon for 5 years and for most of that time have found them to be a very professional and proud organisation. My home internet connection was fast 24/7 and the only two problems I ever had were dealt with in a very responsive manner.

Their profile was impressive and most Geekzoners had nothing but praise for them. Management would often pop in to help on the forums and acknowleged the praise and importantly, any problems that customers may have aired in this very public and knowlegeable forum. Problems always appeared to be acknowledged with a view to rectifying the situation and customer feedback was encouraged. To an outsider, Orcon certainly appeared to be at the top of their game with great customer service, a great product offering and a business culture that the remaining ISPs could only hope to aspire to.

Sadly, my own experience over the past eight months is a totally different story and has shown how quickly things can change from good to abysmal. Abysmal speeds after 5pm and during weekends is a little hard to swallow as I work from home a lot. Abysmal customer service is hard to swallow as I run my own businness and will not change from that old fashioned course of the customer is always right. Lost emails? Heh, thats nothing compared to the problems we had recieving emails at work from two of our largest suppliers, both of whom use Orcon as their provider. Yes it was a problem at Orcons end and my IT guy was pulling his hair out for 5 days trying to get this rectified.

We have seen a thread lasting 6 or 7 months complaining about Orcons overseas connectivity problems and I recently rang up to ask if this was likely to be rectified shortly as I was just about to consider my business connection arrangements with a view to transfering it all to Orcon. I have to admit that I would not swallow his comments that he was not aware of any problems with overseas connectivity or a slowdown of gigantic proportions at peak time, nor would I swallow that it was a fault on my home line (which mysteriously has been fixing itself outside of those hours for the past six months).

It just goes to show how easy it is to lose that top perch and I can't help but wonder if Orcon is a company in crisis, or is there worse to come?

Cheers

Dave B