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Yep, Slingshot is incredibly bad at dodgy "deals" and bad service. I wouldn't touch them even if they were paying me to use any of their services. The same parent company bought up Orcon a few years ago, so that's probably another ISP worth avoiding (having at one prior point been one of the best choices).
I switched to Orcon about 6 months ago, got 3 months free. So far so good. Yeah, technically they are the same company as Slingshot. When I was shopping around, someone from Slingshot called and I told them that I had switched to Orcon, they were able to check my application on their system.
IMO it's not that bad. I wouldn't trust most of the ISPs offering $70 / month service or consider it the market price. Unlimited Internet are well known for their extreme dodgyness, e.g. cutting off someone with no warnings and 1 weeks notice because they decided 1TB was excessive use https://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=49&topicid=198… . Bryte I don't know. They seem to have been around for a while but with almost no discussion about them. This may be because they've done nothing majorly wrong but I wouldn't really trust that. After all, even for unlimited internet many people had good reason to be sceptical of them based on who was behind them etc, but likewise there weren't actually good evidence until the above happened.
WorldNet and Econofibre (which seems to be a subbrand of WorldNet) have been around for a long time and do have a generally okay reputation although I wouldn't put them in the same category as the Vocus subbrands. Personally, while WorldNet and Econofibre would probably be fine, I'd seriously consider spending a little more. I'm on Orcon GbE at the moment, was on MyRepublic 100/50 before which also uses Vocus as their network provider, and network performance is generally fine. (Of course it's not just the network performance of their backhaul provider but everything else in between including any shaping.)
One thing to remember is that with this sort of thing size does matter. And the NZ ISP market is very top heavy. Vocus is NZ's fourth largest but still only have about 200k customers. The smaller your ISP, the more likely they're going to have problems with something getting saturated and they're not yet willing to upgrade it or at in the process but it's taking a while. (MyRepublic had this, fortunately I mostly missed it.) And likewise, the more likely they are to notice and care if you happen to use 10TB in one month or are in their top tier of users. (Most ISPs have FUGs, but they almost never enforce them and especially not to the extreme of Unlimited.)
That said, the 2 main Vocus subbrands Orcon and Slingshot basically have some variety of 6 months half price or 3 months free year round via either broadbandcompare or Glimp. So this isn't really anything special. But once you're comparing ~$85 vs ~$80m the price equation means the 3 months free starts to be quite a decent offer compared to nothing.
I'm not saying that paying $85 long term is a good idea since eventually you will come out in the negative although it will take quite a long time. BigPipe have a decent reputation as do Skinny and especially now that they are basically just exactly the same network wise as Spark, are probably above Vocus. Voyager maybe as well. Not so sure about Compass. BigPipe currently have 3 months free so are probably the best deal assuming you don't mind email only support and don't mind getting your phone line separately assuming you want one, and that you are able to get the deal. (You can't have been a customer in the past 3 months or something.)
If you can't get BigPipe's deal, IMO it's much of a muchness choosing between Slingshot, Orcon and Stuff all also offering either 3 months free or 6 months half price. Just make sure you change or get a new deal sometime soon after 12 months and remember how to deal with the 30 days notification. I'd probably choose Stuff, just because historically at least, they didn't seem to be offering such a deal all the time so it may mean in 12 months they won't be offering it whereas it seems likely Slingshot and Orcon will be. (Although frankly with 2 of them you can likely just switch between them.) Mind you, if they are offering such a deal for new customers in 12 months, it may be easier to convince their churn department to let you sign up for another 12 months and a new deal rather than having to move ISP.
Thanks for the comprehensive view of the market. One question, you mention how to deal with the 30 day notification to change - what specifically should I be doing or looking for? I guess it's best to give the 30 day notification at 335 days through my current contract but is there more to it to maximise savings?
According to my calculations if you cancel as soon as the 12 month contract is over you save up to about $80 over the course of 12 months compared to non-contract 100/20 fibre broadband, the cheapest of which is about $70/month. This is basically the same as paying for 11 months, getting 1 month free (notice that this doesn't sound as good?) However, if you stick with Slingshot for longer than 18 months, not only would they have clawed back all the money you saved, you'll be overpaying compared to market prices (which is their goal).