General Information on New Zealand

Everything you need to know about power, holidays, television, phones and all that other important stuff.

Business Hours, Credit Cards, Transport, Consumer Goods, Water Supply, New Zealand Public Holidays, Important Dates, Exchange Rates, Tipping, Electricity, Television and Video, Internet Connections, Telephone General Codes, Telephone Area Codes, Miscellaneous Codes

Business Hours

Banks are open 9:00am to 4:30pm - but this can vary slightly. Businesses, shops and offices are generally open Monday to Friday 9:00am to 5:00pm. Most shops are open Saturday morning and in popular visitor towns ( e.g. Rotorua, Queenstown ) they are open 7 days. Late night for shopping is either Thursday or Friday.

Credit Cards

Automatic teller machines are widely available including EFTPOS or Electronic Funds Transfer - Point of Sale. You can buy goods with your card and a PIN number and/or obtain cash. Many ATM's will accept Cirrus cards.
All international credit cards are accepted in NZ including VISA, America Express, Mastercard and Bankcard. Diners cards are accepted in larger places only. Travellers cheques can be changed in banks, hotels and some stores.
There is no restriction on the amount of foreign currency which may be brought into or taken from New Zealand.

Transport

Petrol is about $1.00 per litre although it goes up and dwon a lot! Insurance on a small car is about $200 per year, registration is another $175 per year. There are lots of cheap Japanese used imports over here, so you can get a good car for as little as $4 000, and a cheap car for less than $1 000. Repairs can be the biggest cost - especially parts for late model cars and some Japanese imports, so getting something reliable is a good idea. The import tariffs on all imported cars was removed in May 1998 so new cars have also dropped considerably in price.

Consumer Goods

Most import duties have been abolished, and instead we have a flat 12.5% goods and services tax - GST. Beware of some advertised prices which exclude this. Most shops and restaurants quote prices including GST. This means that imported goods (electrical appliances, clothing etc.) are pretty reasonably priced.

Water Supply

Most New Zealand cities and towns have good public water. Water is safe to drink out of the tap. The water in Christchurch is totally untreated and is supposed to be the purist domestic water supply in the world. In Dunedin the Speights factory has opened up its natural spring and has an outside tap so the public can get water for free.
In bush walking areas giardia has been found in some North Island streams although it is not widely spread. Check your local Department of Conservation office for advice.

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New Zealand Public Holidays

Important Dates

Exchange Rates - 16 January 2000

NZ$1 is worth

Tipping

Tipping is not expected in New Zealand, but is not unwelcome. Employed people don't depend on tips for their income and service charges are not [usually] added to hotel and restaurant bills. Tip for service if you think it is deserved, but don't be surprised by the response.

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Electricity

The normal electricity supply is 230 volts 50 hertz alternating current (AC). Most hotels will have shaver plugs suitable for all international appliances of low power rating, and which will supply 110 and 230 volts. These plugs may be for shavers only. If in doubt, ask.

Television and Video Information

NZ runs on PAL G on UHF. Standard 50 hertz field rate, 25 hertz frame rate. We also use NICAM for stereo TV, rather than one of the various analogue systems. Many of the newer video machines can play PAL, NTSC and Secam videos.

Internet Connections

New Zealand has a very well developed network of Cyber cafes and budget communication centres with a wide range of ways to get wired. Most popular are Hotmail, Yahoo and other free email accounts. The costs for getting online range from free to $6 for 15 minutes.

If you are considering travelling around New Zealand with your laptop and want to hook in to the Net then things can get a little tricky. There are several national ISP's like www.ihug.co.nz or www.xtra.co.nz or www.clear.net.nz with a variety of competing offers.

Compuserve have nodes in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. AOL is not yet present in New Zealand. MSN is just struggling in to existence and I think the IBM network has nodes in major centres. There are also a myriad of other smaller ISP's many with great offers. All of them should now be offering a nationwide toll free service through the new 087 service. Note some toll barred phones will not let you use this number!

Telephone

Telecom NZ is the major supplier of residential phone lines, Saturn being a new comer that offers local lines in the Wellington area only. The Telecom white and yellow pages are available online at: http://www.whitepages.co.nz and http://www.yellowpages.co.nz.

Clear Communications, and Saturn competes with Telecom on toll call market, business lines and the Internet. The cellular network is an analogue/digital hybrid system. Most NZ telephone systems can handle DTMF tone dialling. NZ pulse dialling is the reverse of most countries.

Vodaphone is the only supplier of GSM Digital cellphone within NZ. You can buy a sim card here and operate your phone as "prepaid". This will cost you NZ$59 ( as of 10/01/00) It gives you a connection, a phone number and $40 worth of calling time with peak charges at $1.39 a minute and off peak $0.49 a minute. Extra time can be purchased in values of $20 and upwards. These are available all over the country, in shops, supermarkets and gas stations.

Wall plugs are similar to British Telecom style and uses the BT 600 plug. This is the same as the RJ-11 plug BUT they have different wiring. Connector pins are pins 2 and 5 for the BT 600 plug and this is what you need in NZ ( for the RJ-11 they are 3 & 4 ).

Telephone Area Codes

Telephone Country Code	64
National Directory	018
International Directory	0172
National Tolls	010
International Tolls	0170
Telex Access Code	791

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Telephone Area Codes

Northland / Auckland	09
Waikato / Bay of Plenty	07
Gisborne / Hawkes Bay / Taranaki / Wairarapa / Manawatu	06
Wellington / Kapiti	04
South Island / Stewart Island	03
Scott Base Antarctica	024099

If calling from overseas drop the "0"

Miscellaneous Codes

Air Craft Registration Prefix	ZK
Batch Registration Prefix	KZ
X.25 Country Code	05301
Ham Radio Prefix	ZL

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