Sadly yes, I have similar tales. I went from many years with a company that started off as being paradise.net.nz and eventually turned into a corporate monster. The connection service was just mind blowingly good, the two times in many years that I couldn't connect I rung them, talked to a human being who knew what they were on about, and explained it to me as best they could considering my limited knowledge on the subject. Their billing sucked though once they got big, as when I changed plans I got double billed several months in a row. Sadly I moved to a house where I could only get Telecom broadband (really is narrowband, or disconnectband) instead of Telstra cable. Then began a saga of errors and incompetence. We had no phone for two weeks after they connected it, they sent a total of three modems out for various reasons, and generally everything went wrong a lot. We ended up not paying for the first six weeks of phone, internet, sky, nor any installation fees for anything because some nice person gave me the phone number of somebody three steps up the food chain from my problem so I got in their ear (from my workplace, because I had no home phone). 4.5 years of disconnectband, billing errors, total shambles with sky installs, upgrades downgrades and sidewaysgrades and seriously throttled back broadband, Telstra still won't do cable to my house. Sigh. I miss Telstra, even with their billing bloopers.

I had a poor experience with Vodaphone. Blatent lying to get me to sign up, when I caught them out they lied again. Canceled the account and was told all charges would be wiped, I just had to send the modem back in the courier pack they'd send, no pack arrived so I had to pay for courier. Then was charged $50 for a set up fee, a fee I was first told didn't exist and then told would be wiped. Needless to say, I never used Vodaphone and never will.

As for stress release Ann, try listening to relxing music. Nothing chills me out when I'm stressed like listening to Pink Floyd!

I can only think of one internet game you can play without broadband and that would be runescape.. and even then it might not cope anymore.

My favourite is calling IRD same sort of thing and then the person at the other end can't answer your question and just keeps repeating the same thing over and over as if they ask multiple times my answer might change.. and then when I tell them to shut up and listen to what I am saying for just a minute they say well if you are going to be rude I will terminate the call.. to which my answer is if you were trained in customer service I wouldn't be so frustrated with your lack of it and have no cause to be rude..

I wouldn't think it would take days to get broadband but I suppose it depends on who will be providing it for you and how much of the day their techies spend scratching their bums.

The hard truth is that computers are cheaper than people. Call centers are ghastly places to work, filled with controlling, bottom feeding managament, arcane time keeping and super anal rules. The actual people you eventually talk to are paid minium wage and are treated so badly by calling customers (who have been on hold for hours), that even the employees are burnt out, and have no desire to help people any more.

I've worked in a call centre for over a year now. I was promised it would be temporay and I would be moved into another part of the business. It's been the hardest and most depressing working year of my adult life. Be nice to call centre workers - we know it sucks, and we can't really help as our hands are tied with very limited responsibilites and system access.

I worked in a call centre for nearly 2 years so I am pretty understanding when it comes to call centre staff. EXCEPT when they give me bulls**t excuses due to their inadequate training or down-right laziness!!! When this happens I usually hang up and ring back to talk to a supervisor (don't ask the person you're grouchy at to transfer you to a supervisor cause chances are they transferred you to their mate next to you to piss you off even more - and yes that does happen) Best way to get to a person is to press 0 & # frequently, 9 out of 10 times it'll transfer you to someone for help. Also MAKE SURE you note down the persons name when you get through and any subsequent people you are transferred to. And its not a bad thing if the person you're talking to realises this cause it usually makes them pull their socks up. Call centre work isn't an easy job (not if you do it well) and taking 200+ calls a day can be very daunting but when it comes down to it, most call centre staff in nz are paid pretty well for what they do (Kiwibank for example I think starts on 36 - 38k) so should be offering top notch service!

Nil bastardum carborundum est.

We have had issues with both our last place and current place with getting the power connection set up. Thankfully in both the power was left on by the previous company, so we at least had lights, but they had serious issues finding us in their systems. It took my partner 3 calls to the power company he works with for them to find us - and once he found the person who knew how to search properly, they found us instantly.

The issue i have with phone companies at the moment is how often 018 gives people my office number instead of another... "Can you please tell me when the next bus / train / ferry, to / from here goes?" Ummm... "No. You'll need to ring the Regional Council Transport Contact Centre on -this- number." "Oh, but 018 gave me this one". Well, 018 have been proven to be wrong in the past. Believe me, they are wrong again now! And I have even spoken to them about it, they promised to fix it, we got no calls for about 2 weeks and then they started up again! Something to do with how their operators search for things, and the order they are presented in or something! ARGH!

When I decided to get Broadband, I called Telstra clear and registered for some deal that they were doing at the time. They told me approximately 10 days and my broadband would be functional. Two weeks passed and I didn't hear anything. I rang back only to be told they had no record of my call and nothing was being done for me. I threw a massive tantrum and my broadband was up and running in three days. If I hadn't called, I would never have been contacted by them again.

I've learned now that when you get a computer talking to you (ie telecomputer) just talk a bunch of gibberish a couple of times so the computer doesn't understand your response, it transfers you straight to a real person then.

Yeah, they are hopeless.

I moved down to Wellington from Palmerston North, my broadband provider promised to connect me with a week. A week passed and no Broadband so I rang them up....to find out that there were no free ports in the local exchange and I was on a waiting list.

I asked what the estimated waiting time was and the didn't know (They actually said could be a week or could be two years!!) I asked what position I was on the list and they didn't know. Apparently the telecom company that handles this stuff was under no obligation to tell my broadband provider anything but that I would have to wait. I rang that company and they wouldn't tell me anything. Its not like I was asking for corporate secrets, I just wanted to know if there was two people ahead of me in the queue or 20.

They actually managed to connect my broadband a few weeks later, after I made numerous complaints to my broadband provider, telecom and several members of parliment.

The level of customer service in the telecommunications sector is abysmal at times.