Brian Holden: Tempers flare as rebuild grinds down patience

With this unbearable hot weather, it's heating up even more down south with angry Cantabrians, frustrated with the speed (slowness) of the rebuild.

One man threatening to blow up one of Christchurch's EQC "hubs" and take a gun to staff openly admits that he's at the end of his tether. In September contractors started repairs on his home, but the work was declared substandard and the Earthquake Commission (EQC) agreed to compensate him.

After more than four months of "absolutely nothing" happening, the frustrated man, who had a violent past - lost control, flinging a fire extinguisher at contractors, causing the EQC New Brighton branch to go into lockdown.

EQC and contractors say the incident was far from isolated and abuse is taking a heavy toll on rebuild workers with many quitting their jobs because of insults.

"We have 20 hubs around the city and we've had to make the fences slightly higher, put in exit doors for staff and the reception counters are higher now too, so people can't jump over them so easily," an official said.

He understood homeowners were frustrated, but some behaviour had forced staff out because "customer interaction had become unbearable". Staff have been specially trained to be able to handle aggressive phone calls and how to deal with threats physically and emotionally.

Two years after the earthquake that claimed 185 lives, Cantabrians are well entrenched in a phase of frustration with the unacceptable delays with the rebuild, and violence for many is seen as the only option left. The erosion of morale is setting in and, dare I say - it's going to get worse.

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They've got us over a barrel, the sods.

You'd think that having been with Vodafone since day one, we would be shown some compassion having reached our data download limit three days before the end of the billing month.

To our dismay last week our internet suddenly ground to a halt. Not realising that we'd exceeded our quota, I got on the 0800 helpline to get the go-slow problem sorted. Indeed, I was told that I had maxed out and that they would drip feed any further downloading until the end of the month.

With so much important stuff to download "right now", I requested an upgrade to a higher plan. "Sorry we can't do that" I was told - "unless you move all your land line business to us".

Unfortunately it's not that simple. For reasons unforeseen, our telephone network has morphed into a complex interwoven mishmash, only rivalled by the London Tube railway.

With And Another Thing's internet being on Vodafone, landlines on Telecom and mobiles with 2degrees, it's now a monster, with all companies doing their darnedest to win our custom.

Bottom line - to increase our data plan we must make a major switch so everything fits to the way each company wants it.

Whoever we decide to go with, a major upheaval will be necessary that involves changing phone numbers, email address and even the modem.

These big companies are in on it together, I know they are. Why can't they just do a couple of mouse clicks to allow more data to our address, which I'm happy to pay for?

"Sorry - can't do" is their answer. With the stinking hot weather we've been having I simply haven't got the energy to go through all the paperwork hassle and dicking around just to get a few more gigabytes. I'll just make do with the miserable quota they're feeding me. As I say - the sods have got me over a barrel.