The owners of a restaurant on the outskirts of Auckland are not happy with telecommunications company Chorus, after they were left with no access to the internet for five days.
The owners of the Riverhead Tavern, built in 1857, felt like they were back in the 1800s recently, when their internet went down during a Friday afternoon rush, leaving them with limited options to deal with the day to day running of the business.
"Wages, payroll, supplies, ordering, staff management, rostering, everything's in the cloud and when we've got no internet we're out of business," owner Stephen Pepperell told Seven Sharp.
He says a call directly to Chorus proved futile.
"The most frustrating thing is you cannot communicate with them, it's an iron curtain they're operating behind."
Calling their internet provider meant they had the issue logged but no promise of a quick fix.
"I figured if we can limp through Friday night, we will have it up and running for the weekend, it's our busiest time, we do a thousand covers every weekend," Mr Pepperell said.
Unfortunately that wasn't the case, and they were forced to use their cellphones to connect to the internet which ended up costing a lot in data charges.
"By Saturday night, still nothing, we'd burned through about $150 worth of data on the phone," Mr Pepperell said.
It wasn't until Wednesday that a Chorus technician arrived to fix the problem, a task which Mr Pepperell says was completed in under an hour.
"He said it was just a loose connection in a pillar box up the road."
Since that initial response from Chorus, the company has admitted they should have done better and have offered to reimburse the restaurant's data debt.
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