Well I am unhappy paying for a service that I haven't been able to use. My connection was dropping every few minutes and Telecom told me it wasn't their connection. They even sent me a new modem. I wouldn't have minded if someone at their helpdesk admitted there was a problem with the Go Large Plan, but it was only after several days of lengthy conversations and time wasting, that I got one person who told me about the investigation! In the meantime, my PC ended up being serviced because I was told I had a worm or a virus that was disconnecting me all the time. Telecom's final advice was to switch my plan to the 5G, so finally I have an answer and I realised I'm not going insane after all! hehe

The Telecom credit is not really of interest to me (Its of No benefit unless you continue to use Telecom for more credability it should have been a cash refund). A more effective penality for Telecom would have been a requirement for them to invest the necessary money in making the plan work as advertised. Thats a real penality!.

Is it just me who think that the new change in Telecom's Traffic Management Policy (yes they changed it now) is an absolute bollocks? Now rather than throttling down just P2P file sharing and streaming etc (as their previous policy stated) they changed the policy so that "All... traffic including web surfing, email, downloading, streaming, file sharing or gaming will be managed".

Rather than changing what they deliver to fit their promise, they are changing their promise to fit what they can deliver (deja vu, anyone?) Surely I'm not the only one frustrated by this!

Yes, we're getting our money/credit back and that's great, but I'd rather see Telecom keep the money and invest it in bringing in the 'real' internet faster.

I think the amount of compensation is probably more than adequate, bearing in mind that most people don't use internet or file sharing to an extent where they'll hit the limit. Shame about all the negativity, but folks, this ain't anything new, vote with your feet, and shift your business elsewhere! :)

Ridiculous - we are going a step backwards. Telecom rightfully knew this plan was unsustainable and merely used this as a bait and switch tactic. I don't see the supposedly appointed "watchdogs" reacting yet.

Well, it just got posted on Slashdot. Now the world knows!

So where to from here?
Seemed like a good plan.
Grrr!

What we have seen here is the continued deterioration in the quality of Customer Service that is now a trademark of the IT and Telecommunications industry.

A great example of a product (Go Large) that cannot be delivered due to the lack of hardware (backhaul) neccessary to make the product work.

It tends to remind me of a certain software company that has been known to over-promise and under-deliver and it makes you wonder whether Telecom have tried to model themselves on the same monopolistic business model.

I find it quite amusing and ironic that the winner of this competition will win flight simulator's equivalent of the Go Large Plan - FSX's stated minimum requirements are a 1Ghz processor with 256Mb RAM and it is a well known fact that the latest systems are not enough to run this game at its full potential. Yes the "pipes" aren't big enough to get the data through, but it's not our fault! It must be a problem at your end! Remind you of a certain company?

Maybe the winner of this competition should donate FSX to whoever is responsible for this Go Large fiasco, tie them up infront of their monitor for 5 hours a day and make them watch FSX chug along at 5 frames per second. Only then will they learn how miserable life can be when you are paying for a product that does not deliver, yet knowing that the potential is there.

I look forward to more intervention, more competition and hopefully a new Telecom - but I suspect that might be a big ask in my lifetime.

I think it sucks we get credit and no option of cash back. Telecom said we could cancel our service with them with no penalty but there is indeed a penalty! If you don't stay with Telecom for your phone service you can't use your credit and if you change ISP's you don't get the $10 monthly concession a lot of them offer for having your phone services moved with you to your new ISP.
Talk about stuck between a rock and a hard place.

I think telecom greatly underestimated and miscalculated the number of high bandwidth users who would sign up to this plan. It appears that when this plan was released, many high users switched from Orcon, over to Telecom, as Orcon had also put their prices up around this time. After Telecoms Go Large plan started getting congested in December, many of these people then moved from telecom to Xnet. The same problem will possibly also happen to Xnet in the future as they get more and more high bandwidth users signing up.
I think there are many people on the Go Large plan who have been very greedy with their bandwidth usage, which has caused bottlenecks for other users. The problem when you offer an "YOU CAN EAT"; plan, is that many people will stuff their faces, and it is disgusting to see.

The only thing I'm gonna miss is spending my evenings either rebooting my modem every ten minutes or hitting the phone whilst trying to understand Xtras "Technical support"

I am happy in the sense that Telecom at last admitted it's their fault and not my pc or router settings! They can get away with it (if they want to, I think)considering the all the resources available to them(legal and financial).

The refund is certainly not enough, it should be backdated to October when they first started the Go Large plan.

I stuck with my old 10Gb Adventure plan due to the poor reports about Go Large, so it doesn't really affect me. Is the refund enough? Hard to say. On the one hand they did falsely advertise the service and users have had a lot of grief to get any acknowledgement from Xtra, but conversely, the problems with Go Large were well publicised throughout that period, so people really should have been aware of what they were letting themselves in for.

Interestingly, I got a phone call from Xtra last week asking if I wanted to change from my current plan onto the Go Large plan - I politely declined.

All I see is whinge, whinge, whinge.

Whinge when the net is slow, Telecom put there hand up after (a long) investigation and say "We made a mistake, here have the last couple of months on us"; and still people whinge.

Obviously everybody will probably also whinge that they didn't get Flight Sim X for nothing. ;)

The problems with Go Large started immediately the plan became available, in my case from 27th October 2006.

Only now have management fronted up and publicly stated it has been their problem, whereas previously we had smoke and mirrors, and diversionary talk about congestion with motorway analogies.

Refunds are now being offered backdated to 8th December. Why 8th December?

What is magic about that date when the problem started in October?

Why are they not backdating the refund to October?

Will they refund those like myself who walked away from Xtra in disgust before or very shortly after 8th December?

Telecom have always been gracious when it comes to refunds in my dealing with them. Their first tier operators have an amount they're allowed to refund if a dispute looks iffy. I think this general refund is much of the same and if I were due to a refund I sure wouldn't complain.

Yep - they put their hand up... of course only after they heard consumer was making a complaint against them. honest? i think not. do we really believe they were not aware of the situation? of course they were. would they have refunded ANYBODY on their own bat? personally, I think not.. and...
Interesting that we have to pay cash, yet we only get 'store credit' back.

Thanks Telecom/Xtra for admitting to the problem. Though I do wish Telecom/Xtra would release in some detail as to how they are currently managing traffic. This would allow their existing Go Large users can fully understand what level of service they can expect.

This isnt enough.

Firstly I was sent a faulty modem, I had to deal with my telephone ringing randomly every 10 mins all of January - it took their 'techs' a month of me telling them it was a fault to actually realise it was.
I am glad I am being credited, though I should get my money BACK, but i will use the credit on phone bills.
Telecom feels like they are doing this big deed for the customers. They lied, they cheated, they stole.
They should be shut down. It is the same Antitrust you see with companies like MS... No other ISP's can have the coverage or the money that Telecom does to advertise as much as they did - and it just went to prove their service WAS horrible, after 3 months they have decided perhaps the customer was right?
I complained to everyone I could about being dooped into this service, I am so glad I can leave now without having to pay $90.
Telecom really shouldnt be able to get away with this, I mean for credit card fraud you get jail - this is fraud on a national scale. For stealing from a shop you can get jail, again this is millions and millions of dollars stolen.

I am really happy that something happened about it, and I cant complain at all - I just wish I could kick the corpse a few times before leaving...

I'm happy with the outcome. For the last 2 months speed was not ideal obviously but not unusable. Now that they are crediting me meaning I was using those internet for free, and they have made a point of improving it, I don't think I have much to complain about then. Of course, unless they stuff it up again in the future.

Note that you only get a credit not cash. You still have to use Telecom/Xtra to use up that credit. So Telecom apologizes and locks its dissatisfied customers in for a few months more!

And the crocodile cried too. This repayment of a portion of the fraudulently extorted money goes some way to reversing the mischief, but unless accompanied by public floggings of ALL Xtra executives it falls woefully short of letting justice be seen to be done.

Well Telecon had us again. That really really small print, that little bit that said UNLIMITED DATA (at dial up speeds), AS FAST AS YOUR LINE CAN GO (depending on how over subscribed we are) we should have known better. Congrat's to Consumer and all the others that made them accountable.

I for one am happy enough with the outcome. Maybe a little bit later than we would have liked but they have held their hand up and said yes we stuffed up.

Don't often see that much these days.

Maybe the likes of Microsoft and Intel could do the same with their response to the Mobile Intel® 915GM/GMS, 910GML Express Chipset Vista Aero driver issue.