Wire maintenance refunds for fibre and wireless customers
If you're a former Spark customer and paid for a service called 'wire maintenance' while on a Spark fibre or wireless connection, we may owe you a refund.
To find out, send us your details using the refund checker form and our team will respond within ten business days. It's a good idea to get onto this now, as after 30 November 2022 any wire maintenance refund over $100 will need to be claimed from Inland Revenue, rather than Spark.
What is wire maintenance?
Wire maintenance is an older Spark service designed to cover the cost if certain things go wrong with your internal wiring.
Depending on the type of fault, wire maintenance will cover the cost of the technicians call-out and your repairs.
Following a Commerce Commission investigation, Spark acknowledges that representations on its website and on invoices to wireless and fibre broadband customers about wire maintenance are likely to have breached the Fair Trading Act, because some of these customers were unlikely to need, use or benefit from the wire maintenance service. As a result, Spark has offered, and the Commerce Commission has accepted voluntary court-enforceable undertakings requiring Spark to pay refunds to around 113,000 customers.
Why were Spark’s representations about wire maintenance likely to be misleading for fibre and wireless connections?
Wire maintenance was originally created for copper customers, but since 2014 it was also available to fibre customers. While a small proportion of fibre customers could benefit from the service, it was not applicable for most of these customers. So in 2020 we stopped offering the wire maintenance service to customers on fibre connections. We also removed the service from all active fibre connections.
For wireless customers there is no internal wiring, so the wire maintenance service was of no benefit at all. However, we identified a small number of wireless customers who were incorrectly charged for the wire maintenance service as a result of separate system errors. We removed the service from these connections and refunded those customers.
Wire maintenance refunds for current and former fibre and wireless customers
In parallel with the Commerce Commission's investigation and in accordance with the voluntary undertakings, we've refunded all existing Spark customers who paid for wire maintenance on a fibre or wireless connection.
We have also endeavoured to contact eligible former customers advising them how to claim their refunds. As some former customers may have new contact details, they may not have received the refund communications and instructions. So if you're a former Spark customer that paid for wire maintenance on a fibre or wireless connection and have not yet claimed your refund, send us your details using the refund checker form and our team will be in touch within 10 business days to let you know if you're owed a refund.
After 30 November 2022, any wire maintenance refunds over $100 will be transferred to Inland Revenue in accordance with the Unclaimed Moneys Act 1971. You will be able to claim any refund you are owed directly from there. Refunds under $100 can still be claimed with us.