Thousands of 2degrees customers hit by 'glitch' leaving them stuck on hold

Carmel* realised something was wrong with her phone when Google Maps stopped working. "It was buffering ... it wouldn't search," she says. "I thought something weird was going on."

A few days later, after ongoing issues with her data while out and about, she tried turning her phone off and on again. "It still wasn't working," she says. "Eventually, I was like, 'Nah, something is wrong with my account’."

Carmel has been a customer with 2degrees, a People’s Choice winner and one of the country's most popular phone companies, for several years.

She pays $35 a month for a prepay monthly pay-in-advance account, which gives her a regular amount of data, phone calls and text messages.

This time, when she experienced issues, she checked her app. She could see she had data, yet her phone still wasn't working. Something had clearly changed. "I dived into my transactions and I seemed to be getting charged 20 cents for each text message," Carmel says.

Eventually, she worked out her account had been changed to a Prepay Top Up account – a different plan that asks customers to pay-as-they-go – without her knowledge.

One hundred minutes on the phone

The first time she called 2degrees about the problem, Carmel says she spent nearly 50 minutes waiting to talk to someone.

When she finally made it through, she was told her account had been accidentally switched over to a new plan. "This guy was like, 'Yes, we know about this, there's been a glitch and we have to reset the accounts manually’.'"

Carmel estimated she'd been charged around $25 in extra prepay fees over the mistaken change, but was offered just $15 in compensation, despite her protests. "I had a $33 credit on my phone, so I knew I had used more than that."

She was told to reset her plan to fix the problem, but when she got off the phone, she realised she’d lose all her carry-over data – about 7 gigabytes – once she did so. She was then forced to call 2degrees back and spend another 50 minutes on the phone.

When she got through, a second customer service operator remedied the problem and offered her a refund closer to what she'd been charged for the mistake.

Carmel is irked no one apologised for the inconvenience she was put through. "I received no, 'Sorry this has happened, sorry you had to spend 100 minutes out of your day fixing our problem’."

She wonders why 2degrees doesn't offer call-back options or live chats through its website, so customers aren’t made to wait on hold for so long.

The extent of the problem: 'thousands affected'

In a statement to Consumer NZ, 2degrees admitted there was a "technical issue" with some prepay accounts that affected several thousand customers.

"This issue saw some prepay plans not auto-renewing as usual, meaning that a portion of these customers were charged casual usage rates rather than using their monthly allocation of plan text, calls and data," a spokesperson said.

"While we fixed the underlying issue quickly, it’s taken us longer than we would have liked to identify all impacted customers.

"We have now identified all impacted customers, and are in the process of refunding all casual usage charges that these customers have incurred since the technical issue occurred that would have otherwise been covered by the customer’s monthly allocation.

"We are contacting them to explain and apologise ... we are confident that we have solved the underlying problem and will have completed refunding customers over the next couple of days."

When asked about the absence of call-back and online chat functions, the spokesperson said, “We have offered chat and call back features in the past, and regularly evaluate tools in this space … We offer chat through social media platforms, and of course also offer email support.”

A formal apology and compensation

Since Consumer got in touch with 2degrees, Carmel has received a formal apology and an offer of 3 months’ free service as compensation for the 10 days she had issues with her phone, and the amount of time she spent sorting out the problem.

She believes 2degrees handled her complaint badly, and the problem should never have happened in the first place. She doesn’t want to switch providers as her home broadband contract is also with 2degrees.

But she says the incident has left her “with a bad taste in my mouth”.

What we think

Under the Consumer Guarantees Act, service providers must guarantee their services will be “performed with reasonable care and skill”.

While the problem was resolved once Consumer got involved, we believe 2degrees has fallen short in their interactions with Carmel. Her issues should have been fixed and an apology issued during that initial phone call.

We also believe nearly 50 minutes is too long to spend on hold – especially twice in one day – when the problem wasn’t Carmel’s to resolve. Other phone companies offer call-back and live chat options. We feel 2degrees should speed up its response time or do the same.

What to do if you're unhappy with your phone company

• If you have an issue, tell the company what you're unhappy about and give them the opportunity to remedy the situation.
• Check offers from competing companies to make sure you're getting the best value for money.
• Consumer has a list of the best and worst phone companies for 2024 that you can check: https://www.consumer.org.nz/articles/consumer-nz-reveals-2024-s-best-and-worst-mobile-phone-providers
• If you're still unhappy, you can complain to the Telecommunications Dispute Resolution service, or contact the Commerce Commission.

---

*Name changed to protect privacy