SPARK NZ — Local services in Waitematā

As someone who has worked in the NZ telco industry for 18 years and worked directly on Apple's eSIM customer journeys, I am genuinely shocked at how poor the experience is with Skinny NZ @skinnymobile. And not surprised that they don’t list an address online, hiding under the Spark umbrella so you are unable to post any feedback or reviews.

A modern eSIM transfer should be a seamless, QR-codeless process that takes less than a minute.

Unfortunately, Skinny still relies on an antiquated QR code system, which itself is completely broken. On my recent attempt to transfer my eSIM, the process failed at step 2 when the "next" button remained grayed out, despite all details being correct.

This left me with no option but to start a Messenger chat for support (because having actual people to talk to is a cost Spark can no longer afford), which, on a weekend, adds another full day of waiting. When you're transferring a SIM, there's usually a sense of urgency, and this process completely fails to deliver on that front…

It's disappointing to see a company focus on stupid AI ads which take jobs away from NZ actors and flashy marketing rather than investing in a core customer process that is clearly broken.

It's a significant step backwards and shows a company that is losing touch with what actually matters...

Pretty useless company. Foreign lady on the helpline was very nice and clearly trying to be helpful, but prevented in doing so by what appears to be a poorly designed system.

My partner and I both purchased $79 travel Sims at Auckland international airport, which ostensibly includes unlimited local calls for 90 days. Four days later we tried to call a local number for the first time and instead got an automated message from spark telling us we have no credit. It then gave us phone menu options, one of which was checking our credit, where we were told again that we had unlimited calls within NZ.

Phones affected were recent Motorola and Samsung models, both currently working in Australia with voice calls over 4G

International phone calls worked fine, as did data, but we wasted an hour of our holiday trying to sort this out to no avail. Again, absolutely not Aisha (helpdesk rep)'s fault, frankly she weren't above and beyond trying to sort things out, but I would very much recommend anyone visiting NZ who thinks there's any chance they may want to make local calls to investigate one of the...

I had very disgusting experience with Spark NZ. My mom came to NZ for a few months before, so I bought a Spark Pre-paid sim card for her. The first $10 credit was out within 10 days, but mom did not use it much. She told me she could not call me, so I topped up another $10. However, the credit was out again in another 10 days. I was so shocked and checked the usage history. The pre-paid credit was deducted $1 per day even it was not used at all. It is obviously stealing money from customers. How disgusting is that. I contacted Spark and asked for refund. The email was kicked back and forth many times, eventually no reply anymore after I insisted asking for refund.

Spark is the only one cell phone service provider in NZ charging pre-paid customers $1 per day, even they do not use the credit at all. And there was no reminder for customers before buying the sim card. I can only say it is an ugly successful trap. We changed to another company's sim card after that. Of course never got the refund from Spark. You made $20 from us, but no more ever again!! Well...