Flip NZ product reviews

Yet another nasty surprise with Flip who claim to be 'FAIRER BROADBAND AND HOMELINE NZ'. One can not call international toll free numbers like Apple's support line (00800 76667666 links to USA) for free. I got charged $20 for a single call when their own terms and conditions state that toll free numbers are free. Also according to their price list, calls to USA are 20c/min capped at $2 for 2 hours! No apology, no refund offer. When I asked (via email) for a refund as it would have been cheaper to call on my cellphone, the useless support representative 'Missy' offered $10 as though 'meeting me halfway' was a favour. She totally ignored my request to list any other unusual charging practices they have despite my asking for them repeatedly.

The professional response would have been an immediate refund coupled with an apology. This should have been followed with a 'thank you for finding bug & help improve our service' with a refund of the $25 joining fee as a token of thanks . Lastly a note saying they are working to fix this bug & will let me know as soon as it is done.

No wonder they are the only ones that have a signup fee (I paid $25 as there was a 50% discount special). They zero out the price advantage they have over other providers with unprofessionalism.

We were connected to flip on 9.4.14. A couple of days later discovered the fax was not working when I needed it. After they claimed to have fixed it, they did not have a number I could send a test fax to. Still to be tested.

30.4.14 discovered that unlike other landline providers they will not redirect all incoming calls to your mobile for free when your line goes down. They will charge 20c. per minute . Also warned me that I may have to pay $138 for a false callout fee if despite all the disconnecting this & that, 3 phone calls (as I had to move furniture) if the fault turns out to be in the roof cavity i.e. within the home.

I also discovered the hard way that I cannot use calling cards on flip so one may end up wasting any money still left on them in addition to paying at least 20% higher charges that flip has over most calling cards

Not sure yet if the lower cost of their service is worth the downtime of frequent malfunctions particularly as they are also supposed to be incompatible with the St John's medical alarm.

However if the faults had not occurred, I would have been very happy to have moved to flip & saved a lot over a year of Telecom.

Tried to sign up a friend, so they could FaceTime family overseas especially for Easter. Spoke to sales the week prior, all go no problems. You have to wait 5-7 working days for their tech team to sort you out. Sales spoke to friend, confirmed all details and rang me back to confirm all is good, sounds good.
Then next week I call them cause no text received to say starting up. Was advised through auto system, phone number not known. So I ring back and pick 'technical staff' they advise no knowledge of my request and put me through to sales, they say my request not in their system but they can start the processes for me, will still take 5-7 working days and this is onThursday before Easter!
I tell them who I spoke to, give them ID number and time of call, but as far as they are concerned, they can't do anything. I insist on speaking to Sales Manager, she comes on line and advises the best she can do is look up the call and find out what problem is.
She calls back and says it is either a system problem or an operator problem, they don't know which. Guess what they also have no way of finding out! They admit it is one of these things but say they cannot move faster than the old 5-7 days and are not interested in offering any kind of compensation as.... Wait for it... I'm not a customer yet!
In this day and age this lack of service attitude is dreadful, but of more concern must be the incompetence of their hardware and their inability to find solutions to problems within their own business. The best you can say for them is they don't have contracts so if you do get caught up with them, you can 'flip them'.

Just trying to sign up to flip was a nightmare...

Firstly, they only operate in 60% of NZ which is ok, but fairly limiting to the other 40% of NZ. We are in a highly populated Auckland town which wasn't able to be reached. I did look at hooking up another property which I also wanted connected.

When I called, I was advised to sign up online. This is also ok, but we ran into a problem as it was advertised as FREE installation - however, our first payment included a $49.95 additional to all fees that were paid in advance. After spending an hour on the phone and talking with 5 different people, I was finally told that we would have to pay this fee and then email them or call them back to get that $49.95 credited back to our account. I asked for confirmation that we would definitely get this credit back, but there was no guarantee. I then asked for the name of the person I was dealing with and only a first name was given.

Sorry flip, but paying $134.95 for a service in advance that comes with no guarantee is sad at best. As a business operator, I understand two things about a successful business. Firstly, a good system is required. I have to say that although the system being used may be cost efficient, it is far from smooth sailing from a customer point of view. Secondly, a good business should excel in customer service. The customer service I received was well below average, with every single person seemingly interested in "fobbing me off" or just getting a sale.

As a result of this experience, I would not recommend using flip, nor will I be signing up with them!

I had a look to see what was available as an alternative to Telecom and noticed an advert on TV for Flip which sounded like a good alternative. I had a look at the website and it was all explained, what was needed to sign up and how much it would cost, there are several options but it was easy to use and navigate.

I phoned the helpline to sign up as I needed to explain a few things that weren't covered in the online sign in process and found the staff extremely helpful and they explained everything so there were no surprises. I didn't need a new modem so that was great, had to get the number changed but they were able to do it with minimal fuss.

The website is easy to use to check your account and top up if needed. I have even discovered how to check what numbers were called and the cost (good to know when toll calls are involved). If you go over the data limit then it says it slows down but I found it was still pretty fast unlike Telecom which would go right down to dial up speed, or you can buy extra data, you just go online and you can do it all from there.

I would recommend Flip to anyone who wants to cut costs and isn't too worried about a huge data allowance, we don't download much so it is perfect for us.

When researching Internet service providers we looked at joining up with Flip. We looked the fact it was New Zealand owned and operated and also that it was a pre-paid service. The idea of paying for what you needed sounded really appealing.

We checked out their website, which was easy to navigate and understand, and as such made researching everything you needed to know in one place a breeze. And after making sure we were well informed, we decided to go ahead and sign up.

What we did not realise at the time (and perhaps this has changed) was how much it was going to cost to sign up. For a pre-paid service it was going to cost just over $150 to join. This would be debited from your bank account within 7 days (or you could pay by credit card), and then your services would be connected. It seemed like a very costly start up to begin with, and so feeling uncomfortable about it we cancelled our sign up and decided further investigation was needed.