In our case we have several key staff on the XT network who were not able to be contacted. When you tried to contact any of these staff you went to their voice mail - no doubt we were charged for this "call" as was anymone else that tried to call any of the 100,000 Telecom "customers" during this outage. If Telecom is serious about "compensation" they should be looking to compensate the thousands of people who got charged for calls that they could never make becuse their system was down for an extended period.

Also we switched to XT for is's enhanced data capabilities - yet there is no talk of "free" data for the weekend - only free voice.

In our case we have not been at all impressed with the overall relability of the XT network - yet alone this lattest issue. Also we have not found Telecom particularly responsive to concerns we have rasied with them about the relaibility of the XT network.

What about those people not on Telecom XT who were desperately trying to contact someone who is on it? Hmmm... yeah right.

Telecom need to offer more than compensation to their customers. They need to give assurance that the impact of this upgrade occuring again will not effect 100,000 people. Sure upgrades do turn to custard just like on the home PC, so spreading the risk needs to be their priority to their customers and not $$'s. If I was an IT company looking to sign up I'd be asking these questions. Not sure what 2Degrees is like for spreading the risk, but they do have a roaming agreement with VF so should their network die their customers can still have services.

Maybe XT should supply a VF Pre-Paid sim in their connection packs for back-up LOL

@ Easy fix #15 Interesting: 2degrees T&C's: "...This means you may not receive all of the Services in all areas all of the time." Vodas T&C's: "...it is impossible to provide a fault-free service"

So good luck on those "backup systems" that are in place!

@ Gerbil #22 So you're saying Reynolds shouldn't get paid? Jeesh.

@ Geoff #37 Yet. Every company has outages.

Yes, it was a pain in the rear. No doubt about that. But the compensation is pretty generous, is it not? Funny how many people assumed there wouldn't be any, and stated as such.

Even BMW's break down, people. Does that make them rubbish? Of course not.

I love how every one goes on about the call centres being overseas, up untill 6 months ago i worked in the faults call centre and guess what new zealand, landline, business and mobile faults is only based in Auckland New Zealand, only the broadband help desk which has like 100 people in auckland and a handful of people being trialled on out sourcing) and dial up help desk (which is fast becoming a redundant service any way) is based over seas, which means, when you call into faults and act all high and mighty and down right racist, your actually making another New Zealand living citizen feel like S#$%, so good on you all you accepting and PC kiwis. I left not because of the work but because i couldnt handle the stress of being treated poorly by people hiding behind telephones.

oh and Dave if your read your terms and conditions properly you'll see that service is not garuntee'd at all times which means you've agreed to allow for technical faults and outtages, so if you go to court good luck

The Worst part about this is that advertised that we could get reception in a shipping container in the ocean, yet there are still parts of New Plymouth where my phone struggles for reception, and I had to turn it off when I was in the Manawatu recently because it was going flat looking for reception, Where was that shipping container? must of been in the middle of Manukau harbour that seems to be NZ to companies like Telecom

I dropped Telecom and went to 2 Degrees. Service and reliability has never been better. When you ring 2 Degrees customer care number, you actually get to speak to a New Zealander and you get prompt friendly service. No outages with them!!!

Just called Telecom to cancel my contract this morning.. 'ok mam, upon seeing your service i can see SIX TIMES this month you have been unable to make calls'. WHAT A JOKE!!!! This is by no means a one off

Change the record people. It's a new network, of course there will be issues as they are building it. If you people can't live without your phones for a while I pity you. Although this downtime was a bit of an inconvenience for me, I used this thing called a landline to get hold of people. Well done Telecom for the offer of a free weekend, i'm sure it will enable your customers to catch up with friends and family this close to Christmas.

does this free weekend apply to pre pay??