Kind of a shame, they’ve always been pretty solid for me.
Just a heads up for any of their customers. Hidden deep in the FAQ it says: “if you have ever overpaid i.e. have a credit balance with us, we won’t pass that along to 2degrees, and, unless you specifically contact us to request your money back, we’ll be greedy pricks and keep it for ourselves”.
(I may have paraphrased their wording a bit).
Surely there are laws around that right? Like they can’t just keep the extra for themselves and say “Welp, we fold, even though we sold all of your info and your account to another company”
Somewhat related - I’m surprised BigPipe is still up and kicking, I’ve been with them for many years now with the expectation they’ll throw us over to Skinny or just directly to Spark at some point but never seems to happen 🤔 there are some slightly cheaper options out there in terms of plans, but I paid a one-off fee for a static IP some time ago and would be a real pain to lose it, especially when most providers these days seem to charge a monthly fee for a static IP rather than a one off cost (presumably because of the shift to CG-NAT)
Bigpipe is owned by Spark. I feel this is different, like MyRepublic are staying but they don’t want to do NZ internet anymore.
I think Spark recognised the value of having different brands to hit different markets, but they still get the benefits of economy of scale. E.g. routers all shipped from same warehouse but on different box depending on ISP brand, one call center that tells staff what ISP you’re calling to give the correct greeting, etc. They probably also think it’s funny when people get angry about something and run to a different ISP without realising it’s also Spark.
but I paid a one-off fee for a static IP some time ago and would be a real pain to lose it, especially when most providers these days seem to charge a monthly fee for a static IP rather than a one off cost (presumably because of the shift to CG-NAT)
They charge the monthly fee because people pay it. CG-NAT isn’t even that common, and IPs generally don’t change unless you restart your router. But these days if you’re ok with cloudflare then it’s pretty common to use Cloudflare Tunnels, which make an outbound connection to cloudflare to remove the need for port forwarding and a public IP.
Yeah, hence I thought Spark might try and finish up the BigPipe brand and wrap it into Skinny 🤷♂️ all the DNS servers etc. all point to Spark infr. now anyway. Same concept as people running off to different insurance companies without realising they’re mostly underwritten by the same set of corporates anyway 😂
They probably have data that shows they keep more customers if they have the different brands because people like to swap for deals. Probably make a fortune on the $15 router shipping fee when they surely don’t pay more than $3 under their bulk contracts.
one-off fee for a static IP some time ago and would be a real pain to lose it, especially when most providers these days seem to charge a monthly fee for a static IP rather than a one off cost (presumably because of the shift to CG-NAT)
I got moved to CG-NAT and complained that my phone backup to my home server stopped working - “oh sorry, how can we fix that for you?”
Free static thanks - and it worked
I was with MyRepublic once upon a time. Absolutely terrible customer service and wildly unhelpful with issues. I’m not going to cry over them folding.
It looks like they just don’t want to be in the business of NZ internet anymore. They are still doing NZ mobile, and are wanting to get more into their Singapore operations so I guess they just sold their customers to 2degrees?
A shame, more competition is always better for us. Quite a few of them now under 2degrees/Vocus group. I’ve been with 2degrees for long time, but haven’t had any cause to change yet.
I just search around every year for whoever has the best deal when my contract is up. They seem to be pretty much the same these days.
Good advice. I’ve just been lazy and they credited me a free static IP when they switched to CGNAT, so can’t be bothered updating everything
