ADSL accounts cut off

smb3 said:
To me it boils down to this. The service said that you get "unlimited" local bandwidth. That to me says that i have the permission to download whatever local content i want to 24/7. Now, according to that definition of unlimited ...the guy who did 2Tb (although theoretically that isn't possible on a single 4Mb line in a month, a year maybe) was entitled to that bandwidth since he made an agreement with Mweb for unlimited bandwidth.

Now the problem for me starts when during the last month of the trial, you become branded as an abuser of the service (im not sure if this spoils your reputation for getting other accounts)? And during a time when local data is still unlimited? I'm sorry, but i can't be an abuser if i signed up for "unlimited" bandwidth and no argument can justify me being an abuser of unlimited bandwidth. If i made an agreement that im entitled to 50Gb of local bandwidth then im an abuser and i will say so myself, but not under these conditions.

My other problem is the very business ethics of Mweb. Sure you can cancel your service, but there are good ways and bad ways of doing things. Trying to invoke a local cap out of nowhere is clearly a bad thing as was proven last month. Trying to claim that your local "unlimited" bandwidth can still be used but yet you label people as abusers if they try is also clearly a bad thing. Even worse is phoning already infuriated customers telling them that they are abusers of unlimited bandwidth even worse, actually its quite insulting (i never got my call yet). I can almost guarantee that if Mweb sent a normal email 2 months before the saying something like "We cancelling in two months, if you want out you can use next month to cancel" i am dead sure that nobody would of commented and everybody would of accepted it. I would of even said good things about mweb if i really think about it. But instead people have to deal with unethical business strategies in order to cancel an agreement.

So my view is that we shouldn't complain about local bandwidth ending. We should rather focus on Mweb having explicit underhanded business tactics which is the real thing that shouldnt go unnoticed in my mind. I really hope that this type of business behavior gets what it deserves.
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Well said.. if they informed all, everyone would have made a plan.

I'm cancelling mine tomorrow.
 
First they say local is free, then they report they are stopping the free local trial, now they cutting off accounts. WTF!!! :eek:

If your still with Mweb its time to seriously consider leaving them.


...and we all thought Telkom were the spawn of satan!
 
this has goggen so far out of hand that i hope someone sues mweb.
 
Sigh, don't these fools know the meaning of the word 'uncapped'? (rhetorical question in SA fraudband).
 
You can't advertise 'eat as much as you like' then expect people to start paying or show them the door after their 10th pizza. Your underestimation or lack of planning = your loss. We get burned by exceeding our caps & then having to pay out of bundle rates, why should you be any different. Want some Vaseline Mweb?
 
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Lets say Mweb gets their bandwidth for R40 a gig international and R7 a gig local (I don't know actual figures, but I don't these will be too far off)

Mweb charges R145 for 1 gig international and "uncapped" local.

If I use my 1 gig, get capped and then use 15 gigs local then Mweb makes no money (since cost of bandwidth alone = 40 + 7*15 = 145)

If someone uses 100 gigs, they cost Mweb R740 (40 + 100*7) for a service that they are only paying R145 for. (Mweb loses R595 per account, per month to these customers)

Now I know Mweb sells thousands of accounts, and like they say 95% of people only used 2 gigs local so 95% of people are giving Mweb a profit of R91 a pop (145 - 40 - 2*7 = R91) but still what this means for Mweb is that they could cap local to 2 gigs and still keep 95% of thier users happy (and milk R91 per user instead of losing money to a handful of users)

Them canceling people's accounts midway through the month is a VERY bad move though, there is no debating that. Mweb should have caught a wake up sooner to the fact that if they say local is uncapped, then people are going to use thier account as an uncapped account and not have a bad conscience about it either, that's logic (and there is nothing wrong with it).

If Mweb woke up sooner they would have been able to warn what they call heavy uses a lot earlier, instead of suddenly getting angry and disconnecting people.

Mweb, when you still have to pay for bandwidth per gig and you sell an uncapped account, you are exposing yourself to the risk of people using more data then you expect. It's business, in a situation like that YOU carry the risk.
 
venom said:
2tb of data equated to 167gigs a month across the trial. Not really as bad as they make it out to be, I know some people who do more than that on 30gig local accounts.
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AFAIK it was 2TB in 1 month
Impossible? Not really. Considering that some people has 2 or more 4mb lines

If its "unlimited" that usually means to the man in the street "eat as much as you want"

;)
my 2c
 
lordnokon said:
People are tired being ripped off, being charge ridiculous prices for something which is free in the rest of the world and for bad service... If you are happy with bad service and the rest above. I really hope you enjoy yourself.
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I think this is only the second time that I have agreed with killa. It's obvious that they are going to can it when people start downloading 1TB during a month. Who is going to pay for it? The cost of bandwidth in SA is exhorbitant thanks to Telskum and at the end of the day, anyone offering this type of service is going to get raped and eventually can it. The people ripping it will move to the "next" one and destroy that for everyone until there is no one else offering it any more. People are talking about how MWeb are going to have slew of cancellations at the end of the month. Do you really think they will mind losing people that are costing them a fortune?

It does not matter whether it's free in the rest of the world, we don't have the same situation here and thats most certainly not MWeb's fault. I don't like them at all but I can't fault them here.
 
Abe said:
I think this is only the second time that I have agreed with killa. It's obvious that they are going to can it when people start downloading 1TB during a month. Who is going to pay for it? The cost of bandwidth in SA is exhorbitant thanks to Telskum and at the end of the day, anyone offering this type of service is going to get raped and eventually can it. The people ripping it will move to the "next" one and destroy that for everyone until there is no one else offering it any more. People are talking about how MWeb are going to have slew of cancellations at the end of the month. Do you really think they will mind losing people that are costing them a fortune?

It does not matter whether it's free in the rest of the world, we don't have the same situation here and thats most certainly not MWeb's fault. I don't like them at all but I can't fault them here.
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Then why did they allow free Unlimited ? did they not understand the meaning of the word. Must we shed a tear for them, because some of us actually understood it to mean exactly what it is ?

I think not.
 
TheLoot said:
Them canceling people's accounts midway through the month is a VERY bad move though, there is no debating that. Mweb should have caught a wake up sooner to the fact that if they say local is uncapped, then people are going to use thier account as an uncapped account and not have a bad conscience about it either, that's logic (and there is nothing wrong with it).
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They probably should have reacted slightly differently but letting it go on for much longer could have devistating consequences in this economic climate. I am sure they would happily pay the people back the R145 for terminating the account early as it would probably save them money.

My guess is that someone put 2 and 2 together and suddenly realised they were losing money hand over foot because of the two types of "uncapped" accounts. People in SA milk these things for everything they are worth and end up ruining it for the rest of people. While they are technically correct in their uncapped definition, the problem in SA is that companies underestimate the appetite that most P2P users here have after being starved for so long. This "uncapped" thing has happened a couple of times already that I can remember and every time it end in tears. I doubt that there will be any companies left in SA that will be brave enough to go this route in the future when SEACOM and other initiatives start to bear fruit. Just because they would probably all have already been burnt by it. At the end of the day, someone has to pay for the bandwidth and it's not cheap here.
 
ponder said:
So only 5% of people used more than 2GB, that really is not much and I suspect the 2TB case (besides being impossible) you can put down to a few rare cases.
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And someone who uses 1TB is basically using the equivilent of 500 other people. I would hazard a guess that the top 50 users of bandwidth on this deal are probably using 5 times as much as all of the rest put together.
 
I don't really believe the 1TB figure for the month.

1) Thats the theoretical maximum you can get from a 4MB line running 24x7x30 - you telling me the guy run at 100% utilization for a full month!
2) What local stuff can you possibly download that comes to 1TB (Considering the local news servers are down more than they are up!)

Doh...its 2TB - that's even more unbelievable. They would have to run 2 lines sharing 1 one account which I don't think mweb would allow anyway.
 
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Abe said:
I think this is only the second time that I have agreed with killa. It's obvious that they are going to can it when people start downloading 1TB during a month. Who is going to pay for it? The cost of bandwidth in SA is exhorbitant thanks to Telskum and at the end of the day, anyone offering this type of service is going to get raped and eventually can it. The people ripping it will move to the "next" one and destroy that for everyone until there is no one else offering it any more. People are talking about how MWeb are going to have slew of cancellations at the end of the month. Do you really think they will mind losing people that are costing them a fortune?
It does not matter whether it's free in the rest of the world, we don't have the same situation here and thats most certainly not MWeb's fault. I don't like them at all but I can't fault them here.
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I agree that people should take into consideration that they might mess it up for everyone, but unlimited is still unlimited.

As for people going to cancell or not cancell their accounts. Alot of the people on this and other forums moaning about mweb can actually steer potencial new clients away from mweb because of this. I might just send in a few cancellations myself and move my clients over to another ISp just to prove a point. If a few of the other people on these forums does the same, believe me it will make a dent.
;)
 
gregmcc said:
I don't really believe the 1TB figure for the month.

1) Thats the theoretical maximum you can get from a 4MB line running 24x7x30 - you telling me the guy run at 100% utilization for a full month!
2) What local stuff can you possibly download that comes to 1TB (Considering the local news servers are down more than they are up!)
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Remember it's up and down with P2P and one just had to take a look at OpenWeb's site a short while back to see just how much people can milk these things. And yes, I really believe that there were some people that had it on at almost 100% all of the time.
 
quik1 said:
I agree that people should take into consideration that they might mess it up for everyone, but unlimited is still unlimited.
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Yes, and it was a mistake on MWebs part not to take into account that there would be a lot of people who would "take advantage" of such an offer. Probably the only company that has enough subscribers to absorb that sort of usage is Telkom. At the end of the day, MWeb made a mistake in their assumptions and corrected it. I have not read the terms and conditions of the contract but almost all companies reserve the right to cancel the contract unilaterally so "capping" people at least gives the users the choice of continuing with the "limited" version of cancelling.
 
MWEB=Fail
Noobs downloading 1TB=Fail
Telkom=Fail
Neotel=Fail
iBurst=Fail

U see the pattern here...

Everything is a fail in the eyes of people who misuse something...
Yes, we know, it said unlimited, but did you read the fineprint?
I trust MWEB would of had some fineprint somewhere!

Point=There's nothing we can do, not even moaning on this forum will fix it, so how about being happy that you're getting a service at all...!

I don't think there is 1 Positive Post on this forum, about Telkom or any other service providers.
You can't possibly tell me that your ISP has never done ANYTHING GOOD?
I Have telkom ADSL, and yes it has it's issues, but let's TRY be positive for one day???
 
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