Everyone likes to beat-up the big brands.
They are an easy target.
There is always something to complain about.
And its comforting that your complaint is just one of many because you know there are hundreds or thousands of customers who feel the same way you do.
You don’t expect to get an official response. You just want to get your feelings off your chest.
Telecom NZ is one of those brands.
You hate Telecom.
I hate Telecom.
Everyone hates Telecom.
Don’t you just dread the prospect of being forced to give them a call to report a fault, or deal with a billing issue, or set up a new service, or anything?
For the next couple of days you probably tell everyone you meet about how an hour or two of your precious time was wasted on hold to Telecom’s call centre in India/Phillipines for an issue that should take 2 minutes to fix (or should never have occured in the first place).
You are not alone. I’m just like you.
So when Vodafone started offering home lines a few years ago I switched over. It felt good to support the underdog.
It’s been 3 years now since I’ve had to deal with Telecom. But last week I switched back because I had heard good things about Telecoms new broadband plan “Big Time“, and I was tired of my broadband provider Xnet.
I watched Telecom change their logo a few months ago, and noticed they have updated their website too, but I thought that was the end of it – just cosmetic changes, nothing too serious.
But I was wrong.
They have upgraded their service too.
Here’s my experience over the last 10 days:
Contact #1:
- Called to signup with Telecom.
- They took my account numbers for Vodafone and Xnet (my broadband provider at the time), and promised to close those accounts for me.
- We chose a switchover date of 31 Dec 09 to avoid any double billing. [WIN!]
- I demanded that the connection fee be waived. They agreed. [WIN!]
Contact #2:
- On the 4th of January, after 4 days of smooth operation, there hadn’t been any improvement with my broadband speed (0.7Mbit/sec). I was disappointed. This was the primary reason I changed. I called the Telecom help desk.
- My call went through to the Phillipines which worried me. I gritted my teeth. But the lady on the other end of the phone knew her shit inside-out! [WIN!]
- She ran through some tests including a check on the distance to the nearest Telecom exchange, and among other things, suggested I turn off my modem for 60 seconds. By the end of the call my download speed had increased 50% (to 1.5Mbit/sec). [WIN!]
- She also detected that my modem was only ADSL, not ADSL2, so she suggested that was another reason for slow speeds. She asked if I had received my free modem from Telecom yet. I had not, so she transferred me to dispatch in New Zealand and stayed on the line to introduce us “Sheldon, I’ll now have Frank on the line ‘Hi Sheldon!’, he’ll take you through the next steps”. [WIN!]
- Frank said the modem hadn’t been sent out yet (perhaps with all the public holidays over the last few days), but he’d send it out now and it should arrive either next day or the following day. It arrived this morning at 7am – just 14 hours after the phone call [WIN!]
Contact #3:
- I plugged in the new modem (Thomson SpeedTouch ST536v6) and it installed itself (no installation CD required). The download speed is 6 times faster than my old modem (4MBit/sec). [WIN!]
- But I wanted to set a password on the modem to reduce the chance of it getting hacked. I couldn’t find the IP address to get access to the Control Panel anywhere! Spent 60 minutes searching online before I finally found it on page 135 of the manual for the modem on the official website [FAIL!]
- I was pretty annoyed and thought I better complain. I decided to try Telecom NZ’s Twitter account @TelecomNZ (which had auto-followed me when I mentioned the word “Telecom” in a tweet yesterday).
- Jennie replied to my tweet within 4 minutes. I told her a few more details in another tweet and she promised to look into it [WIN!]
- I just wanted to save the next person some trouble, but even just having my complaint acknowledged is huge. [WIN!]
So far so good.
Have you had a pleasant experience with Telecom since the rebrand?
I’d like to hear it. Share your story below.