a tale of orcon proportions

We finally to decided to take the plunge at home, and swap from trusty old Snap ADSL to a shiny, ADSL2+ Orcon connection. Apparently, it’s a no-brainer, and we thought that the hardest part would be splitting the single free hotel night between two couples and Dave.

Aaah, such naivety.

The first hurdle was the signup form on Orcon’s website. Where to begin….

Perhaps with the “Address Locater”, and its select drop down populated with every street type known to man (please, talk to ZoomIn, they’ve done addresses properly).

Or perhaps with the password field – “Your password must be 5 to 7 characters, contain one number and one capital letter”. As this ruled out my usual ridiculously long passphrase, I picked something which I promptly forgot.

Maybe, even the “Phone Number” field, which was marked “REQUIRED”, even though I had previously indicated (twice) “YES, I understand that this plan doesn’t include a phone line”. I entered Orcon’s own 0800 number, and moved on.

Admittedly, I was attempting all of this over a couple of beers with the flatties, but guys – you’re an ISP. Surely someone there knows their Internets well enough to fix this for you? The whole thing smacks of being designed and directed by the marketing department.

With that ordeal over with, and a suitably humorous username selected, it was time to wait for the confirmation email. Which never came. Oh well, it would appear I’m not the only one. When an email eventually came, it looked like this:

(Surely whatever library you’re using has a working strftime implementation? Human readable dates, please!)

Thus ensued a short wait for the jolly Chorus worker (I imagine him looking ever-so-slightly like Bob the Builder) to toddle on off to the exchange and flip some switches.

And then – Success! An email from the folks at Orcon Provisioning – “You’re now connected to Orcon@Home+”. Woo! I raced to my router’s web interface, feverish with new-gadget delight, and punched in my shiny Orcon Username and …. what was that password again?

Bugger. 20 Minutes on hold later, I am armed with a password I can remember (for some reason the character requirements are now relaxed) and punch it in to my router. All lights are green, and we are go for launch! Punch “google.com” into Firefox, and bam! I get sent to http://portal.snap.net.nz which helpfully informs me that my Snap username and password are wrong. Well, duh, I’m using my Orcon ones.

Seems Bob the Chorus switch-flipper has not been doing his job.

Alright, another call to Orcon, and another twenty minutes of my life wasted on hold. To make matters worse, the recorded hold voice says “some-fink” rather that “some-thing“, and I shudder at each repetition of that lazy “th”. I am met with an awesomely polite but entirely useless support person.

I should take some time out to commend Orcon on their support setup here. It seems she’s got screen shots next to her checklist for exactly my router type, and can see exactly what I’m seeing on the screen. She assumes I’m on a Windows machine at first (“Now click Start…”) but is quickly back with me once I mention my Mac-ness. Ten points for Gryffindor.

This is all wonderful, and I’m sure my Grandma would appreciate the careful and polite help, but the first thing I said to this support person was “Okay, all outgoing HTTP connections are being redirected to a portal site for our previous provider. This means we’re not switched over at your end”. At this point, she had two options:

1. Swap me over to someone that could speak my language
2. Continue with the excruciating process of me attempting to explain my setup (No, we have two routers. Yes, they are on different subnets. No, not different networks, subnets…. *sigh*).

Eventually, I interrupted as politely as possible – “Look, would it be possible to speak to someone who knows what’s going on here, rather than just running through another checklist?”. I felt mean, but was transferred nonetheless. Into hold-queue oblivion. Ten minutes later I gave up. Lesson learned: Don’t call in the evening.

So, a call in the morning. And I meet Braiden, a young man who embraces the spirit, if not the letter, of ‘FizzBin.’ (Orcon: That man needs a payrise, stat). We quickly ditch the checklists, and he says they’ll check everything out for me at their end. And now we wait in “a-technician-will-be-there-shortly” limbo.

(Stay tuned for Chapter 2: In Which I Finally Get Our Flat Connected To The Internets.)