Customer service in New Zealand really does leave a lot to be desired. Over the past two weeks I have been trying to resolve ongoing issues with my ISP (Vodafone NZ) over the inability to play World of Warcraft. The customer service has at times been comical, although I admit I have struggled to laugh.
The issues arose on the 29th of July. Suddenly out of nowhere anyone wishing to access WoW (or a range of other MMOs such as GuildWars) have found themselves with latency in the 1000s. Latecny has always been an issue for kiwi's because the Oceanic servers are actually located on the west coast of the US, but with a decent broadband package and Leatrix Latency Fix applied we have generally been able to play with between 250-400ms latency. This allows raidng and AH scans to happen without much problem.
This isnt the first time that Vodafone has suffered issues with WoW - in fact this is the third time in 18 months that this niche market has been affected. And because your gamer is such a niche customer, I personally believe that this part of the issue.
There are allegedly 14 million WoW players on the planet of 6 billion inhabitants. Presuming that the majority of these players are located in the 'developed world' (I hate that term but you know what I mean), New Zealand with its population of a little over 4 million, probably has around 20,000 WoW players maximum.
Now even presuming that each of these has a separate broadband connection (which is unlikely - three accounts run off my single connection), and that all 14 million WoW players actually current play (again unlikely). Telecom is the dominant player in the market of broadband supply - but even so I suspect there are 3000-4000 customers of Vodafone currently affected by this.
Vodafone has begrudgingly acknowledged the issue, posting on the 6th August 2010 that
"Since 1st July some customers have been experiencing issues resulting in slow internet browsing during peak times (1600 – 2300) and decreased online gaming performance."
Since then a few comments on their 'unofficial' forums have suggested that they are working on the issue but no ETA for resolutions has been given.
Phonecalls to their customer services are even worse. Vodafone is unable to update their CSRs so they know nothing. Alas they many of them seem unaware of any issues at all, so phonecalls result is requests to turn off your modem, or that "This is a problem with Blizzard."
A subset of the gaming community has set up camp in the Vodafone Forums - specifically on the following thread:
but we are (I post as Sardonic there) but the tip of the iceberg. We have finally caught the attention of the media, with TV One sending a film crew around to one of the posters to interview this afternoon. I am quite proud that the gaming community has enough clout to ping the attention of the news network (or its a very slow day!)
The issues arose on the 29th of July. Suddenly out of nowhere anyone wishing to access WoW (or a range of other MMOs such as GuildWars) have found themselves with latency in the 1000s. Latecny has always been an issue for kiwi's because the Oceanic servers are actually located on the west coast of the US, but with a decent broadband package and Leatrix Latency Fix applied we have generally been able to play with between 250-400ms latency. This allows raidng and AH scans to happen without much problem.
This isnt the first time that Vodafone has suffered issues with WoW - in fact this is the third time in 18 months that this niche market has been affected. And because your gamer is such a niche customer, I personally believe that this part of the issue.
There are allegedly 14 million WoW players on the planet of 6 billion inhabitants. Presuming that the majority of these players are located in the 'developed world' (I hate that term but you know what I mean), New Zealand with its population of a little over 4 million, probably has around 20,000 WoW players maximum.
Now even presuming that each of these has a separate broadband connection (which is unlikely - three accounts run off my single connection), and that all 14 million WoW players actually current play (again unlikely). Telecom is the dominant player in the market of broadband supply - but even so I suspect there are 3000-4000 customers of Vodafone currently affected by this.
Vodafone has begrudgingly acknowledged the issue, posting on the 6th August 2010 that
"Since 1st July some customers have been experiencing issues resulting in slow internet browsing during peak times (1600 – 2300) and decreased online gaming performance."
Since then a few comments on their 'unofficial' forums have suggested that they are working on the issue but no ETA for resolutions has been given.
Phonecalls to their customer services are even worse. Vodafone is unable to update their CSRs so they know nothing. Alas they many of them seem unaware of any issues at all, so phonecalls result is requests to turn off your modem, or that "This is a problem with Blizzard."
A subset of the gaming community has set up camp in the Vodafone Forums - specifically on the following thread:
but we are (I post as Sardonic there) but the tip of the iceberg. We have finally caught the attention of the media, with TV One sending a film crew around to one of the posters to interview this afternoon. I am quite proud that the gaming community has enough clout to ping the attention of the news network (or its a very slow day!)
3 comments:
Good time to be an auctioneer huh? Hope it gets fixed soon :(
http://tvnz.co.nz/technology-news/gamers-fire-shot-vodafone-3694584
@1:33 in the video: stealth kitty!
It's always the fault of the originator of the signal, never the ISP! Hasn't ISP company dogma taught you that? 9_9
Ugh. I echo the hopes that something is done about the issue soon for you! And good job on getting some media attention in that direction. Sometimes, that does the trick for getting a company to a -least- take their heads out of the mud long enough to be able to tell people what is going on.
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