The Country's Biggest ISP..

[emsporter.livejournal.com]

New Zealand is a small place. As such, there is one major ISP (belonging to the major phone company, which is mostly a monopoly post privatization). It's name is Xtra.

I have a real job (yes, tech support), but I occasionally put websites together for friends and friends-of. (For money. Although good friends get sites-for-food.)

Couple weeks ago, I put a site together for a fairly clueless friend-of-a-friend. Got a panicked call a few days later saying that all their email from this site wasn't getting through.

They're right, too. On investigating with the web host, all mail is being rejected by Xtra, their ISP. It's not being dumped in spam filters, it's flat being rejected. Unsurprisingly, this isn't acceptable.



I ask my clients to ring xtra. They are variously told "it's not our problem" and "use pop3, that will solve it". The latter is obviously not helpful; emails sent from the Website addresses aren't going to be received by anyone at xtra, like 90% of my client's client's are.

I ring the xtra helpdesk, on the grounds that I have a mild clue, and might be able to pummel the system into at least listening to me. (Oohh, such naivety.)

I get bounced between four fairly clueless folks, who clearly just want me the hell off their line. (This is partly the fault of the IVR - when I responded with a clear "no" to the question "Do you have an xtra broadband or xtra dialup account?", I was punted to sales. Sigh.)

I eventually find out the name of the technical team I need to talk with. Surprise, they are only open until 8pm; it's now 8.30, and I started my little endeavour at 7.30pm. I email my issue to their email address instead.

I receive a bounceback message. Mailbox is over quota.

I try the general support inbox. It appears to be rejecting emails from Gmail accounts. How rude.

I give up, and ring again the next day.

Once again, the IVR punts me to sales. Sales punt me to phone faults (?), who go "wtf?" and punt me to dial up support; the lacking-in-English rep there politely yet firmly insists that she cannot help me without either my xtra email address or account number. I politely yet more firmly explain that I AM NOT AN XTRA CUSTOMER. She eventually hears the word "email" and transfers me to a line which politely informs me to check my spam filters - and hangs up. I try again. I receive a slightly less clueless muppet, who directs me to ... mobile assistance? What? They bounce me to business support. OK, whatever, I'll go with that.

I have been on the phone for over an hour! 47 minutes of that was on varying queues holding! Finally, I have a person with a clue! We discuss the situation, they ask for email headers (hooray) and we end the conversation. (I have been on the phone for 1:16.)

I have sent them a long and detailed email. It contains all the email headers I could dredge up, from webmail addresses and from the forms on the website that send out emails. (And yes, said forms are designed to ensure that spam is hard. Email's not my thing, but I'm OK with web design.) It contains the mail logs that the webhost support sent.

And I am left with a great deal of frustration at xtra. I really don't hold out much hope that this will be fixed - which sucks greatly for my customers.

Comments

[brothersterno.livejournal.com]

lie. tell them you are a customer. good luck.

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

Yep. And tell them you're a business customer. It works in Oz, and the UK.

[emsporter.livejournal.com]

I would. Except for the bit where they ask for your account details.

[canray.livejournal.com]

Ya, they're big sticklers for confirming accounts in Business.

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

I more meant in terms of getting past the IVR - it's a bitch when you hit the stupid RL people. :-)

[turningallblue.livejournal.com]

I dunno, I'd think that'd just be inviting wrath. Another customer claiming they're business when I could clearly see they were residential = merciless mocking and hatred.

[brothersterno.livejournal.com]

What does not work is to tell them you are a business customer losing thousands of dollars a minute and you need your $[$cheapest] home dsl with NO service level fixed before the next Tuesday the phone company has promised to repair it by.

That's when tech support suggests you fail over to your backup line, because obviously if the internet is so important to your business you have one. And then they laugh at you when you try to escalate to a manager.

[nastajus.livejournal.com]

getting the right person that will help you may be a process. you may have to try several call throughs to people. i say forget the email, get back in touch with those humans until you unfortunately are required to understand their system. they seem too big to understand each all themselves...

[meow-tuna.livejournal.com]

This is why i'm not an Xtra customer ;)

[phrogg.livejournal.com]

I just got back from a visit to NZ...seriously thinking about trying to make another trip there, maybe to stay.

How's the IT job market down there?

[emsporter.livejournal.com]

Providing you're in one of the bigger cities, it seems pretty good.

My partner is a Brit import, and has been finding contract work without any issues. Works as a systems admin / network admin / related tasks. NZ particularly needs folks with provable experience. Phone monkies aren't in short supply; people with brains are.

[phrogg.livejournal.com]

So if i were to bring, say, a couple college degrees and various certs...i should be good?

Pay decent enough?

[emsporter.livejournal.com]

Define decent pay! I work on a helpdesk, and can feed/clothe/house/etc two people in a ridiculously tiny apartment and pay off my student loan etc. It's a bit tight at times, but doable. Two incomes = win hard.

Certs aren't everything. Experience is. If you can bring qualifications + (ideally) 5+ years experience in 'real' IT (eg not being a call center muppet) I'd say you're a shoe-in for whatever takes your fancy, really. Less experience = less options. But that's the case whereever you are, really.

[bekscilla.livejournal.com]

Tell me about it. If it wasn't for the fact that I'd miss husband too much (and his job pays more than mine), I'd totally go work in one of our NZ helpdesks for a few months. They're desperate to hire people with a clue.

What has helped me

[sdanks.livejournal.com]

I have dealt with many cell phone companies and mortgage companies. I find that when I start the call, it helps to ask the first question, "Are you really good at Customer Service? Because I am trying to find someone who is." They will say, "Yes I am" and then they spend the rest of the time trying to prove it. If you are frustrated with the company, tell them so, but let them know that you are not frustrated with them, and you understand that they only work there and you are looking for someone who can help you. This usually gets the representative to do things for you that a defensive rep will not do. Then if they do a good job, tell them that they have turned out to be excellent at customer service. They will feel that they need to do one more thing for you to pay you back, and they will finishe the job and see it though. Otherwise, you are just caller number 27 of the 150 calls a day they have to deal with.

Just my 2 cents worth. . .

Re: What has helped me

[pinuppink.livejournal.com]

If someone called me and asked me if I was really good at customer service it would irritate me. I take pride in my job and calling and asking me that is patronizing and rude. I would not go out of my way for someone asking me that. I will however, go out of my way to someone who is polite, patient and pleasant.

Re: What has helped me

[sdanks.livejournal.com]

O.K., Well, it has worked well for me in the past.

Re: What has helped me

[brothersterno.livejournal.com]

I'd be tempted to answer "NO, I'm not, and what kind of question is that?"

Re: What has helped me

[ateji.livejournal.com]

I'm going to agree with the other comments here: asking me, while I am working a customer service job, whether I am good at it? Great way to get me to find the easiest way to satisfy you and get you off my line so I can talk to someone who doesn't have their head up their ass. Very little follow-up.

What does work?

Clear, concise questions and explanations of what has been going on, not your life story.

A caller I can get off my line after getting him/her what's needed with the least amount of time spent on BS? Awesome call.

[sethb.livejournal.com]

Why not find someone who is an xtra customer to complain that he can't get email that he wants, and it's being rejected by xtra before it gets near him (so they can't blame his spam filters)? They might listen to their customers.

[neferde.livejournal.com]

I've had to call helpdesks like that before for clients. It's taken years to figure out, but now I always start the call by saying that I'm the "technology interpreter" for so-and-so who's asked me to call for them because they aren't comfortable trying to fix the issue themselves. It's truly amazing how relaxed most of the reps get after that and how willing they are to go the extra mile to make sure the problem gets fixed. Granted I do have to have the actual customer's name and account information, but that's something I have to have anyways. That line even worked when one of my client's websites got blacklisted for spam (he was on the same mail server as a spammer) and I had to have the hosting service (his ISP) switch mail servers and get the site off the blacklists. Took care of the entire issue in under 30 minutes.

[harry-whodunnit.livejournal.com]

I used to answer email to the Xtra general support inbox. :)

At the time I left, a combination of poor management and low wages had pushed staff turnover to 400%. If things are the same now, there's every chance the people you spoke with have only been there a week.

I left for a frontline position at Telstra-Clear, with a 40% pay rise. The money was only part of it though -- I was so stressed from the sucky environment that I was chewing my nails to the point of bleeding on my keyboard every day by 10 AM.

[jesus1310.livejournal.com]

Don't worry, it's not just NZ. We have an ISP with support like that over here, it's called Comcast.