Yahoo!Xtra Bubble pays out

Letters to the Editor

Ted Gibbons | Tuesday, August 26 2008

Along with many others, I suffered through the Yahoo!Xtra Bubble fiasco last year and was without reliable email for 10 days. I made many calls to technical support in Thailand in a fruitless attempt to regain the service I had before the disastrous “upgrade”.

Last week I gained a judgement against Telecom from the Disputes Tribunal for the amount of $1,000. The amount was in compensation for the 18.5 hours of my time wasted trying to re-establish my Xtra email account. I logged the time I spent on the calls and also made a note of the advice I got, which was often contradictory and nonsensical. During my hearing Telecom staff commented they were concerned about a precedent being set, to which I commented they were quite right to be worried!

The Consumer Guarantee Act provides ample protection to NZ consumers and applies to telecommunications companies, along with power, water and gas companies and even those you don’t have a direct contract with, for example if you are a Telstra customer but your home has a Telecom line.
The act requires companies to provide services that are fit for the purpose, to act with reasonable care and skill, and within a reasonable timeframe. Where they do not, ample remedies are available.
I was able to clearly demonstrate Telecom had failed each of these requirements, and so was successful in claiming compensation for my wasted time.

It’s noteworthy that companies cannot avoid their obligations by claiming their terms and conditions apply. Companies cannot contract out of their obligations under the act. Telecom claimed it had met its obligations by providing a week’s free internet access (worth about $15), the tribunal clearly disagreed.

The process of taking action against a company is straightforward and inexpensive and can be done through your local disputes tribunal.
John O’Hara, North Auckland

John wins a 2GB Clip MP3 player from Sandisk for letter of the month.

Unviewable Freeview
Despite all the hype over the introduction of Freeview HD, I’m concerned about the method of transmission. Freeview’s HD signal is carried on terrestrial -based UHF only. You know, aerials, those things that have been the bane of fringe-area, valley-bound or rural clients for as long as there has been TV. And those houses are still there out in the countryside, still suffering ghost-ridden pictures, or signals that fade in and out depending on the weather. Many, like me, are still reliant on a small pocket translator that may or may not survive the next power surge, thunderstorm or lightning strike. Knowing what NZ’s geography is like, there must be hundreds of those translators all over the country, still servicing hundreds of thousands of viewers, all keen to be part of the new Digital Age. Sticking a flash new UHF aerial up on the roof is certainly not going to get HD TV to these people.

So I guess I won’t be getting HD on my plasma anytime soon, as I’m not planning on shifting house just yet, and I’m not counting on the local pocket translator being upgraded to UHF – ever.
D. Reisima, Wellington

Not Paradise
For over a week I’ve been receiving emails purporting to be from TelstraClear’s Paradise.net Customer Service Team to a Paradise.net email address I operate. These emails request the recipient to reply (immediately) with their webmail user ID and password. They state that the recipient’s email account will be wiped in a week if they don’t do so.

An experienced user of the internet, I was sure these emails were a scam, but they’re quite convincing and I’m also sure many people would be tricked. What surprises me is TelstraClear’s lack of response to the existence of these emails. I haven’t received a warning email from them and I can’t see anything on the Paradise website apart from a link to SCAMwatch (which has no mention of these emails). I called the helpdesk yesterday, was assured the emails are a scam and was told they knew about them. I suggested an official response was in order and the helpdesk person said they’d mention it to their supervisor.

It’s hard for me to believe an email service provider would not respond promptly to a scamming scheme designed to get its customers usernames and passwords, but TelstraClear is just sitting on its hands.
James Taylor, Nelson

3G or not 3G
I am new to computers and don’t know if what I am receiving from Vodafone is what I’m paying for.

I have a Toshiba Satellite Pro 200 laptop with a 1.7GHz dual-core processor and 2GB of RAM. I use a Vodafone 3G Express Card for internet connection. My download speed is around 10 to 20 kb/sec. Is this what Vodafone think is Broadband 3G speed? I have seen the speed as high as 140 kb/sec but not often. When I connect to next door’s cable I get download speed over 14 times faster.

I pay $72 per month but when I signed up was told it would be $60 for 3GBs. I was also told the Express Card was free but was charged $99 for it. If I want to opt out of the contract Vodafone want to charge me $500. If I’m not getting what I paid for, isn’t Vodafone in breach of contract?

When I took the Express Card to Vodafone they said it was fine. It’s set on 3G only and switches between 3G and HSDPA while I’m downloading. I still get the job done but it takes a long time – something I don’t have a lot of.

I phoned the Vodafone help desk and was told I had the wrong program installed. I have 9.1.2 and was told I should have 9.2.1. Do you think I have a set up problem or, is this what Vodafone thinks is 3G broadband speed?
Roger Hunt, Wellington

Vodafone External Communications Manager Paul Brislen replies:
Our 3G broadband services are sold with a 30 day money back guarantee. Customers can find they live or work in a building that doesn’t get good 3G coverage and while we work hard to ensure all customers can use the service, those that can’t can return the device and receive a refund.
Vodafone is currently spending $500 million to extend both the reach of the 3G network (out to match our current 2G network footprint by the end of next year) and the capability of the network, increasing speeds up to 7.2Mbit/s download.

Mail does not get through
I’m an engineer and noticed over a few weeks that email from several of our clients’ mail servers had not been reaching its recipients. Testing revealed that the problem lay with Yahoo!Xtra.
The problem is that all email from domains unknown to Yahoo’s white-list is reported as spam and dropped into the Yahoo!Xtra Bubble spam folder in Yahoo mail. As a result, those emails will not be downloaded when a customer polls their account.

The Yahoo! Xtra fix is to use a Yahoo request form and request to have your mail server added to the Yahoo white-list. This sounds easy but you must fill out an extremely irritating form for each mail server. As a consultant firm supporting numerous companies, that means we must request to have over 100 mail servers added to the white-list.

The only other solution is to contact every Yahoo!Xtra email address owner and ask them to log in to Yahoo!Xtra Bubble and mark the email as not spam – not really an option. I rang Xtra support and they said that they couldn’t do anything because it was Yahoo’s system. Who are we paying money to?
Shane Corcoran, Via email