time for war?

Okay we have each on an individual level suffered in the hands of sentech.

We are sick of their lies and their half truths, bad service, terrible speeds.
May I propose that whoever reads this and has suffered from the above with regards to sentech please email 3rd degree and explain to them nicely what you think of your
sentech product.

[email protected]

I think it is time Sentech are exposed to the public at large. When I emailed I was
told by Debrah:

Thanks for your e-mail - we will check it out.
Regards
Debora Patta

I think the more people who email her with regards to this the more attention and energy the 3rd degree team might put into this.

Please keep it calm and collected with her... and remember the more source material you have the better.

I think it is time we on the forum unite with a common goal. WAR on Sentech.

myWireless 128, 64, 48, 16 - depends on its mood.

You'd stand a better chance of being broadcast if you filtered your issues - makes less of a research/facts collation burden on them. Suggest groupings in your emails as follows, with all input clearly headed:

1. - quality of product (bandwidth, capping, shaping)
2. - quality of service (orc-desk, false promises)
3. - bold-faced corporate lying (CUG group issues)
4. - poor billing systems
5. - tower issues
6. - contract cancellations
7. - etc.

thanks mbs... that makes much more sense.
What do others think... or is it easier to anonimously complain on this forum which achieves nothing.

myWireless 128, 64, 48, 16 - depends on its mood.

Consider that the previous "war" on Sentech ended with only a fizzle as the CUG became co-opted with "secret information" nobody could know about (and since which time most of the original CUG have cancelled) and the media only released a few half-hearted stories about complaints by Sentech users, none of which realy achieved anything at the end of the day. I think it will be even harder to create a meaningful public stink about Sentech as there are now even fewer subscribers and the media has already covered the newsworthy aspects of the story - i.e. the legal case against the sentechsucks website.

You may also find a lot of apathy among Sentech subscribers as many of us are just biding our time until something better comes along and have already abandoned hope that Sentech will ever come right. In the final analysis you have to ask yourself if it is worth the effort and what you hope to achieve out of it. Some Sentech subscribers have in the past gone to a lot of effort on behalf of other subscribers, and at the end of the day, achieved nothing - Donn opened an ASA complaint, Rodent and others had numerous meetings with Sentech and setup anti-Sentech websites, but still, many months later, nothing has come of it.

Having said that, it may still be possible to achieve some action if we are intelligent about it. This is all about PR and Sentech is actually quite good at spinning things their way - heck that final CUG meeting even became a positive media story about how well Sentech was co-operating with subscribers to fix the problems.

Some critical ground rules must be agreed on:

1. No secret or closed meetings with Sentech management - while this may make you feel special and "informed", they are designed to charm you and divide the subscribers, and ultimately will be used to twist things Sentech's way - remember how the last "war" fizzled largely because the CUG people urged everyone to calm down and stop protesting as Sentech had a secret "fix" in the pipeline?

2. Whoever gets involved must be very careful not to do or say anything that can be used by Sentech in the press. For instance, never agree to co-operate with them on anything, stick to your demands and do not negotiate. The moment you give in, Sentech will issue press releases about how they are working with subscribers to provide an improved service, and make it sound like there's not much of an issue, and we're all one big happy family.

The key to this is media coverage and there is nothing very interesting for the media to report anymore - the best we could hope for is "followup" type stories about how sentech users are still not happy, and it ultimately just makes us sound like a bunch of whiners. What is needed is something that the media will latch onto and report as a story, and nothing too technical either as no mainstream media outlet is going to run a story about bad latency or packet loss.

Some examples of what would be an "event" that will get publicity:

1. Any users who are cancelling but own their modems (which you won't easily sell anyway) might want to consider donating their modems for a public bonfire outside sentech's offices, with the media present.

2. Officially laying charges with the public protector regarding abuse of public funds by sentech management. As they are state-owned, they are under the jurisdiction of the public protector, who will investigate allegations that any state-owned company is defrauding or misleading the public.

3. Picketing outside any trade fair/convention or other event where Sentech is exhibiting, or a member of their senior management gives a speech, etc. It does not have to be huge number of people - a small group with signboards detailing just how bad sentech is, will make enough of an impact as it demonstrates that there are subscribers who feel strongly enough about it that they will go to the trouble of demonstrating.

4. Repeatedly opening fresh complaints against Sentech with the ASA and ICASA, as nothing seems to have resulted from the last complaint, where it was actually recommended to Sentech that they drop the term "broadband" and stop using bandwidth to denominate their packages (128k/256k/512k etc).

These are just idle thoughts, and it remains up to any remaining subscribers to decide whether or not this is worth the effort, particularly when you consider that taking action like this may well ultimately result in Sentech shutting down completely, in which case it is debatable about what may have been achieved.

vowthorn you're about 4 months late. Check the site in my sig.





-Information anarchist-
www.sentechhatesfreespeech.org.za
I support:
www.hellkom.co.za
www.poopband.co.za
Looking for something better than IE?
www.mozilla.org/products/firefox

The only war you can wage is by cancelling your subscription, and telling others NOT to subscribe. Sentech is feeling it the hard way, re: the CUG meeting, some facts were chosen not to be exposed here on the forum because we felt that Sentech was sincere in their efforts and wanted a joint press release, to date, nothing has come of it, and since the press release that WAS released, I feel people (including myself) gave up hope. All but one CUG member now has Sentech, and hopefully would be cancelling soon as they're moving.

Like I said, and what others warned Sentech about in the meeting, myself included, was that if they don't fix things, we would be forced to take action, and the action taken? Cancel Sentech and make sure each and every person you come in contact with knows how k@k the company is. I personally talked around 54 people out of getting Sentech, one of which being the biggest NGO's in the world.

If everyone boicotted Sentech, they would make no money, which means no profit, which means they'll die a slow and painful death.

Like I said, most of us are just biding our time - I'm just waiting for iBurst to become available in my area.

hrmm...
it would be nice to have Sentech's failures on TV but then reading the posts and realising the apathy runs deep because so far everything has been a failure it seems rather pointless.

But then that is the problem with SA consumers in general. It doesnt matter that companies do what they do because 99.9% of the time we all sit back and let them do it to us. Telkom did it, Sentech is doing it... cant wait for iBurst who already have a stupid cap offering and a ridiculous price offering and we all just sit back waiting for something better.

TO click on a link and write about your problems to etv is not that intensive... so thanks to anyone who did.

This isn't meant to be a 'work' together with Sentech. This is about telling Sentech to f.uck right off if they think they can get away with it... and the only reason why they will possibly get away with it is because of the posts above.

Sure **** happened for months ago. Sure there were people with websites that got a firm word from Sentech and yes they have moved on... to TELKOM. Revolutions arent easy and they are not always successful, but to write a fat worded post in here that goes no where but just makes Sentech gremlins smirk instead of utilising that energy in a simple email to e-tv is probably one of the most pathetic things I have see on this forum.

disatisfied? had enough? complaining and all you do is talk about failures.... no wonder why Sentech get away with it.

The CUG was not a war... wasnt even a battle. That was some half assed attempt at something which in the end served Sentech's purpose. Oh but the remarks coming from them.. if Sentech DARE release something before they talk to us...blah blah blah. Where the fark was the battle in that... They moved on... they failed...

So what must we sit back and wait? Wait for what?

So I say again:

Click here and expend your energy in an email

[email protected]

It could make all the difference, if not atleast we tried right?


myWireless 128, 64, 48, 16 - depends on its mood.

Vowthorn, I don't believe that you can say that Sentech subscribers have been apathetic - I'd say sentech subscribers have been on the whole one of the most vocal consumer rights groups around, and the fact is that Sentech has lost a huge percentage of it's subscribers because people have voted with their feet and taken their money elsewhere. Fine, continue to make as much noise as possible about it, if only to warn potential subscribers - but lets keep it in perspective. It's sometimes enough just to move on and take your money somewhere else - that's the most powerful form of consumer activism there is. There is no point in flogging a dead horse.

Lets also place the blame more fairly on the monopoly that controls all the international bandwidth into the country. As badly as Sentech is mismanaged, no amount of effort on Sentech's part is going to change the fact that they ultimately rely on international bandwidth that is controlled by a single monopoly. So whether it's iBurst, or Sentech, or Vodacom/MTN 3G, or whatever, none of these services, no matter how consumer driven and excellently they may be managed, is realistically going to be able to offer you an unlimited amount of international bandwidth for an affordable price.

yeah... Sentech is going down... slowly but surely they will because I know I wont sign up with them again... but hell if Sentech could drop their price from R650.00 to R450.00 thats something worth fighting for.

If Sentech could start communicating with their clients... thats something worth fighting for.

Floggin a dead horse is when the horse is dead...

I dont have ADSL as an option... and iBurst can suck my balls if they even think I am going to pay R700 for a 3GB capped service (local and international worse then TELKOM).

but to turn your nose up to fight sentech is actually more pathetic then Sentech itself... and that is SAD.

Leave sentech and find another service to moan about... but I am sick of reading posts all with the same core message of how badly Sentech suck and the moment there is an opportunity for mass action its this big wave of... its not their fault... leaving is the most powerful form of activism.

That aint the most powerful activism out. IMagine the black people thought like that during their struggle. Allright you can not compare this to apartheid in the closest way but its the point that counts.

So Sentech got give what they promised. Ag shame it might be telkom? I dont know they dont tell me anything... they lie. Drop prices... thats consumer action... not walk away...

Hope I dont fight a war with you on my team...



myWireless 128, 64, 48, 16 - depends on its mood.

Last I looked it was an internet connection rather than a life or death matter.

Bollocks to them - I'm not wasting my time fighting a bloody ISP - just cancel is good enough.
That sends out the clearest message of all - mess around your clients and they bugger off elsewhere.

The Sentech MyWirless name is *** these days - people who barely even know what a dialup is have heard of this wireless thingymabob and have heard that it's rubbish. I don't know anyone who would touch it anymore and most existing users are trying to cancel or have cancelled.

Sentech is not the root of the problem, with a measly few thousand users, what's the point in gunning for them ? - Telkom is where the battle is at.

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Vowthorn, if you really want to we can get a new domain registered and hosted offshore as a .com (harder to trace and shutdown) that will be militantly anti-sentech (along the lines of Hellkom). As it will be a fresh website and controversial we can get various media outlets to cover it's launch. Others have done this, the best being the sentechsucks site (now poopband) but they are local sites and (apart from sentechsucks) have not received a huge amount of publicity, and poopband seems largely abandoned. The plan would be to make a central repository of the entire sentech saga as well as take user submissions about how awful the service is, and a forum similar to this.

The main thrust of the website must be an online petition from users that sentech's service is not what was advertised and is substandard. The frontpage can display a counter of how many users have signed the petition, but the power behind the petition must be that each signatory is a unique verified sentech user which means that the website would have to verify that a signatory has a sentech email address and hold it in a database, which raises concerns about trust, security and privacy. It could be a damning indictment on Sentech if a website like that could ultimately hold at least a thousand verified sentech subscriber petitions, and very newsworthy, but I think a lot of subscribers might be worried about getting added to a "baddie list" by sentech.

If enough readers of this forum really believe this is worthwhile then we can start something like this quite easily - between us I'm sure we have the resources to do something like this. The key is to use a really controversial domain name and get it all done offshore in a way that would make it really hard for a local legal firm to trace the domain registration and shutdown the website.

Also, I don't want to start discussing this via private email as it must be totally transparent at all times - if we start private discussions then things will start to go pear-shaped and get all secretive and it will all end up the same way as the last attempt.

Comments?

I was thinking more along the lines of http://www.domainsbyproxy.com or something similar. Only problem is many of the anonymous domain registration services have conditions whereby they will reveal your identity in the event of trademark violation. Maybe what is needed is an added layer of protection whereby we get a foreign national to register the domain with one of these services on our behalf. Somebody in the Bahamas or Upper Volta or somewhere obscure like that where it would be very difficult for local lawyers to go after them - I would like nothing more than to see Sentech sweat over a free speech website that they cannot shutdown, while the media drives more and more people to visit the website.

Is it just me that I don`t see the sentech ad on tv or hear it on radio anymore.



Google is so smart,I typed in Hellkom and guess what google said

Don`t you mean.....<insert evil laugh>
TELKOM!

Yep I saw that ad, though it was one of those very general ads. It mentioned MyWireless along with upcoming VoIP services. No prices, speeds or any specifics for that matter are mentioned so unfortunately can't drag the ASA in on this one [] I'm interested to see how these monkeys manage VoIP given that they can't even run an ISP with a few thousand users.

it would be soooooo funny, consumer on VOIP: "Hello there John, how is things in Cape Town?"


..... two hours later .....

John : "Fine and yourself?"

..... another two hours later (After being disconnected twice) .....

Consumer on VOIP : "Good!"

Thats going to be hillarious... SENTECH NEEDS TO REALISE BUSINESSES THESE DAYS NEEDS TECHNOLOGY THAT WORKS AND CAN BE EFFECTIVE!!!!

About the ads: They actually still call it broadband! Didn't they get hit over the fingers for that?

________________________________________________
Sentech we r - All your base are belong to us!
HA HA HA
Somebody set us up the bomb!
________________________________________________

Actually they're not.
They said "internet AND broadband" but they didn't mention the name MyWireless, so they can be refering to VSTAR etc

funny how they said "internet AND broadband" and not "broadband internet"

Yeah - almost as funny as "We will f-u-ck you up the butt the minute you sign up !" []

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