Knowing that the Vodafail and 2 Degrees coverage is poor where I live led me to go and try the XT network. Unfortunately this turned into a trial which I thought I'd document on here in case it saves anyone else some of the pitfalls and 36 hours loss of use I experienced.

• get micro sim from Albany Mall, telecom store out of stock but the independent nearby had one – relatively easy to do and I was encouraged
• Sunday 29th 9pm 2 degrees credit used up so I put the telecom sim into my phone and call to activate – discovered the foreign call centre didn't know about bundles and their expiry, was told I had to either go into a telecom shop or call during office hours to sort my number port.
• Add credit, discovering it involved buying a voucher on the internet and then adding it to the account using the phone – why isn't it a 1 step process like 2 degrees?
• Visit shop (monday morning) and fill out form for number port, discover I'm not on the smartphone plan so request it's changed
• Call telecom (monday afternoon) as number not swapped and I have no credit left on 2degrees. They tell me they have nothing on the system about the number port and after I removed my old sim to read the number they set it up again. Also told I couldn't have a smartphone bundle on PayG, quoted an article from iphonenewzealand and it was discovered I could. I was promised a call back on my landline in an hour
• No call back so I called telecom again and was told there was something wrong with the number port that had now been fixed. The port will now happen at 7pm
• 7:30ish noticed 2degrees had gone dead so I put my telecom sim in. I then discover I can't use my phone as it has no credit. Called foreign call centre who after suggesting I topped up with 2 degrees and not telecom – sigh – eventually find the missing credit and tell me it will swap over in up to 4 hours.
• 11pm still no credit – give up and go to bed
• 8:30am discover credit has arrived and I can finally use my phone
• 9:30am find how to sort voicemail button on here and I have a fully working phone.

So in summary approx 36 hours without a phone, 4 phone calls, an internet session and a visit to a shop later I have a working phone again. Joining 2 degrees by comparison was an exercise in simplicity and took 1 phone call and a visit to the internet. I also can't have an auto topup on telecom and the calls cost more.

Is this company intent on losing customers?

I ran the credit out on 2 degrees as I didn't want to lose it when I switched.

Glad your switch went better than mine!