Jay Kuten: The telephone torture game

FIBRE-OPTIC CABLE: Fable is fast. Technicians, however, may be a different story.

AS Whanganui is now a "smart city", I was enthusiastic about switching my internet to fibre-optic cable. That was chiefly in expectation that my Skype calls with grandkids in the US would no longer be so pixilated that a grandchild kept asking: "Is that you, Nono?" (Italian for granddad).

It started out well enough.

After a very long wait and some early cock-ups with Vodafone over the package we'd agreed and the one they emailed, a competent and conscientious technician, Paul Vincent of Ultrafast Fibre connected us. That's when our troubles began.

My failing was not recognising that our landlines, once connected to fibre, and not to their own copper, would fail if the modem or the electricity went out. I discovered that fact belatedly when, in the process of setting up the internet connection for my wife, Susan's, laptop, the Vodafone fault technician (with whom I was speaking by phone) suggested a modem restart, whereupon the connection to the techie ceased).

That first fault encounter was when the torture-lite began. Getting the laptop's internet working ate up four hours and involved three techies. It was their putting me on hold while they consulted some more knowledgeable person, when their awful elevator music threatened to wreck havoc with my brain. No. It's not waterboarding, but the holds, up to 20 minutes of cacophony, were enough to make me want to confess to things I haven't done, just to stop the noise.

After the business with the initial contract, this tech experience increased my suspicions of Vodafone's competence/credibility.

It happens that, after those gruelling four hours during which time they controlled my wife's computer remotely, the last technician gave up trying to solve the problem, suggested that the computer was at fault.

In frustration I had to solve the problem myself. I simply repeated what the techie had done, step by step as I had watched her activity on screen, with one exception. I spelled "vodafone" without caps in the internet connection set-up.

Problem solved. Ten minutes. I thought I'd have no further need for "help" from my ISP. I was wrong. Again.

Next day two callers from the US, one, our daughter, sent emails saying they could not get through to our phone and received a recorded message that the "subscriber does not accept incoming calls".

Getting that problem solved has taken a big chunk out of the past two weeks, and my patience. At the outset a techie called Kevin said it could easily be corrected. They could just reconnect my landlines back to copper wire, leaving my internet on fibre. Great. Except I have since spoken with a baker's dozen people, all of whom offer different versions of, "it will be done", "it's already been done", "I'll call you back in a few minutes".

As of this writing, nothing's been fixed and when I told a customer rep that this was a teachable moment, one I might share with others, I got another run-around. Not long after that the landline went dead. I'm still waiting for that "easily correctable" fix.

I suspect that I'm not the only person whose phone (and internet) connections have been messed up in the pursuit of "improvement".

To those in the process of converting to fibre or about to be, my experience with Vodafone is a cautionary tale. That company is said by some people whose opinions I take seriously to be about the best. I take that recommendation now as damning with faint praise.

If my experience of multiple telephone encounters with technicians and others (after the first screw-ups I kept a list of names and dates) making claims that proved counterfactual (you can't say lie in a newspaper) the level of regard and service I received would have ranked well with "Ernestine", Lily Tomlin's sadistic phone operator who suggests: "We're the telephone company. If you don't like us, why don't you try two Dixie cups and some string."