Good News For Xtra Customers

Good News For Xtra Customers

Xtra’s Internet services are up and running again throughout New Zealand.

All Xtra systems were restored yesterday and since then Xtra has been working with customers telling them how to shut down and restart their computers and modems and get back online.

Telecom customer care manager Kelly Moore says Xtra will be offering customers who were significantly affected by the outages a goodwill gesture to acknowledge their frustrations.

“While many Xtra customers have not been seriously affected, we know that some customers have experienced issues over several days.

“We are going to do the fair thing by these customers and give them a goodwill credit equivalent to four days’ Internet use. The amount will vary according to customers’ plan but it will be an average of about $3.25.

“Customers don’t need to do anything at all. Starting next week we will notify Xtra customers about how the goodwill credit will be handled.”

Kelly Moore said that although occasional outages are a fact of life for the Internet, in this case the problems for some customers went on longer than anyone would see as reasonable.

“This is the Internet - it is a best efforts service. ISPs can’t guarantee a continuous un-interrupted service.

“But given the extended nature of these problems, we feel that a goodwill gesture is the right thing to do by customers.”

Background

On Sunday afternoon customers may have had email and connection problems caused by a fault with our power supply. Around 30% of customers also had problems with email for about 10 minutes on Monday morning.

Later on Monday, between approximately 4.40pm and 10.30pm a faulty load balancer, which handles traffic, meant customers could not access websites and check emails.

On Tuesday, some customers may have had trouble getting on line. This caused a snowball effect as modems repeatedly went through the automatic log-on process. This put an increased load on Xtra servers. This issue was fixed on Tuesday evening.

All Xtra services were restored at 12.45pm yesterday.

Advice to customers

Xtra customers will be notified about how the goodwill credit will be managed.

Customers who may still be experiencing delays in connection to the Internet need to shut down their computer and restart their modem to restore service.

To restart your modem, unplug the power cable from the modem and leave it disconnected for 30 seconds, then plug it back in and wait 5 minutes for it to reconnect before attempting to use the Internet.

If you are still unable to get online, please contact the Xtra helpdesk on Phone: 0800 CALLXTRA or 0800 22 5598.

As a result of this problem, a lot of customers are calling Telecom and we are attending to calls as soon as we can.

ENDS

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