Read More1. Two vultures board an airplane, each carrying two dead
raccoons. The stewardess looks at them and says, "I'm sorry,
gentlemen, only one carrion allowed per passenger."
2. Two weevils grew up in the country. One went to silicon valley,
created a startup tech firm, got rich and married a model.
The other stayed behind in the country and never amounted to much.
The second one,naturally,
became known as the lesser of two weevils.
3. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, but when they
lit a fire in the craft, it sank proving once again that you
can't have your kayak and heat it, too.
4. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain
during a root canal? He wanted to transcend dental medication.
5. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and
were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament
victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the
office and asked them to disperse. "But why?" they asked, as they
moved off. "Because," he said, "I can't stand chess nuts boasting
in an open foyer."
6. A woman has twins, and gives them up for adoption. One of
them goes to a family in Egypt and is named "Amal." The other
goes to a family in Spain; they name him "Juan." Years later,
Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon
receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she
also had a picture of Amal. Her husband responds, "They're twins!
If you've seen Juan, you've seen Amal."
7. These friars were behind on their belfry payments, so
they opened up a small florist shop to raise funds. Since
everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, a rival
florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked
the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back
and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. So, the rival
florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug
in town to "persuade" them to close. Hugh beat up the friars and
trashed their store, saying he'd be back if they didn't close up
shop. Terrified, they did so, thereby proving that: Hugh, and
only Hugh, can prevent florist friars.
Read MoreI was interested in the claims by TelstraClear for cheapest home phone and calling (from both their flyers and their new TC ad, based on their "Best" campaign)
Compared to Telecom and for low and high users compared to Vodafone - Commerce Commission Telecommunications Report March 2008
While I'm not dismissing this claim completely (as it is on the ComCom website [pdf]), but TelstraClear have some high landline pricing (as well as a high standard Mobile rate - $0.71/min!), which made me curious.
So I whipped up a spreadsheet today and created two sets of graphs, one for base plan price and the other based on call volume distribution provided by Telecom which is in the ComCom pdf above.
(Want the spreadsheet? I'll upload it if comments say so and probably later on, as I'm watching the Olympics online - JPN v.s. NZ womens soccer)
Here is the number key for the charts (as I can't fit in everything):
| Company | Plan | Price | |
| 1 | Compass Communications | Homeline (Wellington 04 calling region, Christchurch city and most suburbs) | $37.05 |
| 2 | Compass Communications | Homeline (in all other areas) | $44.85 |
| 3 | Orcon | Homeline | $45.00 |
| 4 | Slingshot | Homeline | $44.95 |
| 5 | Snap Internet | Snap Voice - Christchurch/Wellington | $36.00 |
| 6 | Snap Internet | Snap Voice - Rest of NZ | $42.00 |
| 7 | Telecom New Zealand | Homeline (Wellington 04 calling region, Christchurch city and most suburbs) | $37.05 |
| 8 | Telecom New Zealand | Homeline (in all other areas) | $44.85 |
| 9 | Telecom New Zealand | Anytime (Auckland city, Wellington 04 calling region, Christchurch city and most suburbs) | $42.40 |
| 10 | Telecom New Zealand | Anytime (in all other areas) | $47.85 |
| 11 | TelstraClear | Homeplan Phoneline Basic | $44.49 |
| 12 | TelstraClear | Homeplan Phoneline | $49.99 |
| 13 | TelstraClear | InHome Phoneline | $35.95 |
| 14 | Vodafone New Zealand | Home phone (in some regions) | $37.00 |
| 15 | Vodafone New Zealand | Home phone | $42.50 |
| 16 | Vodafone New Zealand | Home phone plus (local plan) | $25.00 |
Base plan pricing:
RED = Selected areas only
GREEN = Utilises mobile network
Total usage price:
Under 1200 minutes
Up to 12000 minutes
(Do note that it is a minutes - price graph, where minutes is at the bottom and price on the left)
I have used the numbers from the Telecom call volume to calculate the total pricing from mobile, national, and international, which is made in to a proportion of a minute multiplied by the rate and multiplied by minutes.
Do note that the cheapest price to a major international country is used.
[There is currently an error with TelstraClear InHome Phoneline - I missed the discounts, will update soon]
You can see that Vodafone's Home phone plus isn't that cheap after around 200-500 average minutes (you can see the bottom red line) which makes Snap's offering (5, 6) the cheapest out of them all.
Read MoreI was just reading about the Australian launch of Dreamspark during the Tech Ed Student Day in Australia and thought I would post an update here about the Microsoft New Zealand initiative in this area.I was told Student Day is not happening... (more in the full post)
Read MoreI just got my hotel booking and air tickets confirmation today, so I will be coming to the Microsoft Tech Ed New Zealand 2008 for sure.I will be landing in Auckland on Sunday 31st August, and attending the speakers' dinner on that evening.<... (more in the full post)
Read MoreOk, that is: If you live in Japan and consume less than 2 MB of data per month. But just take a look at this article here for an idea of the monthly plans for iPhones in other countries.The article actually opens up with an iPhone app you c... (more in the full post)
Read MoreHere we go again, another rant on telco services in New Zealand. The fact is someone has to write about those things, because there isn't any indication that either are getting better or that any association will bring this up - bad customer services is in the same as high data roaming fees.
It looks like people are always complaining about Vodafone's customer services (ref 1, 2, 3). I have experience their "customer service" myself before porting my number out to Telecom.
The most common issue seems to be customer services people promising to fix things and not doing it. Or promising to call back and not doing it. Or people sending e-mails to Vodafone and no receiving a reply.
Every week I receive one or another email from someone trying to contact Vodafone to solve account problems. Why they contact Geekzone instead of Vodafone is something else to discuss - blame "browse by Google" - but I read some interesting stories, mostly people complaining about requests to the customer services not being actioned.
It seems the main problem is "not doing it". Well, "not doing it" doesn't cut, specially now that Vodafone is charging prepay customer $1 per call to their help desk when a human being is involved (and don't worry, you don't count - it's the human being on the other side of the line).
Of course problems happens with other operators and Internet providers - actually it happens so much that an industry body was created to help resolve problems that are not solved.
The Telecommunications Dispute Resolution (TDR) is here to help. There are rules you must follow. Before going and filling a complaint you should read How the Process Works and How to Make a Complaint.
The TDR issues a quarterly report of its activities. In its second report you find that Billing and Credit are 45% of the complaints, with Service/Product Deliver coming in second with 31%. Customer Services comes in third with 11% and Network Performance is fhourth with 8%.
Perhaps after you lodge a formal complaint Vodafone and others will fix their customer services?
Read MoreDon't know why they had removed it on the day of the launch of the Red network, but it's finally back!
Just a note to people who like to get migrated over to the Red network - you can't do that via this form... (yeah, just tried it out)
You're going to have to wait, or encourage them to do your one ASAP.
Read More
No comments:
Post a Comment