For a number of weeks now Auckland Council has been advertising that the 2014 property revaluations would be available on its website on 10 November 2014.
At 8.30 am this morning I visited the site but was unable to access any information on the new valuation done on 1 July 2014.
At 9 am I tried again but this time could not even get access to Auckland Council’s website.
Shortly after 10 am I rang 3010101 to find out what was happening and was greeted by the message
“Welcome to Auckland Council.
Customers are currently experiencing technical difficulties when accessing revaluation information on our website due to high demand. We are working hard to restore access and apologise for the inconvenience. If your call is regarding this issue please try our website later.”
There was then a pause and a message
“Tena koe……………”
I was asked to select “one of the following four options” then offered two options, then told “For any other enquiries please hold.
I held and was then switched back to the original message “Welcome to Auckland Council…………………” What a shambles!
Several times throughout the day I tried the website in vain to get access to the new valuations. Late in the afternoon I got through to “Property valuations” and did a valuation search on 3 properties. One gave details. For the other two it said “No property addresses match your submitted search.”
At 4.50 pm I rang 3010101 yet again and went through two complete cycles of recorded messages before getting through to a human being. She asked me to wait and after 5 minutes of canned music returned to inform me the property revaluations were now all available. I said they weren’t and was asked if I would like to lodge a complaint. I declined the offer.
Shortly before 8 pm I tried the website again and was able to obtain the valuations for the two properties which had earlier failed to match my submitted searches. Just to double check I rang 3010101 and there was the same old recorded message yet again.
On the exorbitant salaries IT employees of Auckland Council are being paid I would have expected much better. A little forethought some weeks ago such as suggesting Waitakere info 8am – 10am, North Shore 10am-12pm, Manukau 12pm – 2pm etc may well have avoided the complication of a message from the call centre suggesting throughout the day to “please try our website later.”
Accountability in Auckland Council 