KEY POINTS:
A good number of Xtra customers have racked up a few hours this week listening to Dave Dobbyn while on hold for technical helpdesk support (the singer's tunes Naked Flame and Welcome Home always seem to be playing when I ring up).
But an anecdotal poll carried out by Herald reader Mark, suggests Xtra's rivals are also struggling to process large traffic volumes. Mark rang each of the ISPs listed below between 11.30 and 12.30 yesterday and these are the results...
Xtra: (0800 225598)
Received a message advising all operators were busy and to hang up and call again later! (tried several times). No option to wait in the queue.
Paradise: (0800 467 272)
Selected the option for technical assistance. Waited on hold for 10 minutes and then hung up. Automated IVR advised average wait times of 20 minutes plus.
Ihug: (0800 438 448)
Selected the option for Broadband help. Playing an initial announcement advising very long wait times of longer than 10 minutes. Waited on hold for 10 minutes and then hung up.
TelstraClear: (0508 888 800)
Selected Technical Assistance. Advised wait times were up to 10 minutes initially. and advised in subsequent announcements that wait times were up to 80 minutes! Hung up after waiting 10 minutes.
Orcon: (0508 467 266)
Selected the option for Broadband. Advised initially the wait time may be longer than usual. Hung up after waiting for 10 minutes.
Either new broadband deals and the spin-off effects of the Bubble outage are impacting other ISPs helpdesk waiting times, or the helpdesks are just not well enough resourced. I fear it's the latter.
Code Blacks win
It was good to see the New Zealand "Code Blacks" team win the FullPressCode competition in Sydney last weekend.
The aim of the event was to design from scratch a website for a charitable organization in 24 hours. The Code Blacks were given the task of building a website for the Grampians disability Advocacy Association, an Australian group that advocates for the rights of the disabled.
The finished website hasn't gone live yet, but the Code Blacks will have it up within a couple of weeks and have committed to giving 15 hours a month of their time to support the site for at least the next year. Hopefully, the event grows, so that more good causes get the professional web touch. The Code Blacks team consisted of:
Thomas Scovell (project manager), Zef Fugaz (information architect), Steve Dennis (designer), Jeffrey Wegesin (HTML/CSS coder), Mark
Rickerby (programmer), Peter Johnston (writer) and Alison Green (all-rounder).
