ATEC - avoid at all costs

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TheShadow

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Location
Midrand, Johannesburg
Hi,

I'm a resident at Dekko Heights residential estate in Midrand.
Since inception, we have been using ATEC as the internet, DSTV and telephone provider.

Our experience thus far has been utterly dreadful.
I have never dealt with a company so disinterested in the requirements of their clients.

Besides managing to screw up an end-to-end fibre solution, their service levels are shocking.
It doesn't matter whether you are an owner, Trustee or the managing agents themselves... ATEC refuses to engage on client issues, ignoring us for the bigger fish.

The largest capped product they offer is 120gigs with a maximum line speed of 10Mbps at around R1200pm.
The fastest uncapped product is a heavily shaped 5Mbps connection with a FUP of 180gigs for R750pm.
The FUP is brickwall.
Their systems are so archaic that they cannot offer anything more than this.

As the rules stand, we have no choice but to use their dreadful services.
I want to warn other members of the community to avoid any medium-size residential complex that has been cursed by this provider.

After begging them for 2 years to up their game, it's clear that they have no interest in progressing our estate.
We are now sitting with an investment in fibre infrastructure which is now worthless.

Has anybody else had any experience with this company?
If so, did you endure similar problems and how did you deal with issues?

This post is made in my personal capacity as an owner in the estate.

Many thanks
Aman
 
We deal with Atec on another front (ingress/egress management), and I have to admit that your statement of them only caring about bigger fish rings entirely true

I received this email on 17 Jul 2015

My apologies for the delay in the delivery of your new scanner. The scanner that was to be allocated to you out of our last delivery was unfortunately issued to the American Embassy in Pretoria as part of an emergency security upgrade. We will have new stock arriving at the end of next week, and can commission your scanner the week thereafter.

Today is 2 December 2015, and I still don't have a scanner

Definitely one of the more useless companies I've come across
 
We have been waiting for them to rollout an urgent upgrade to the DSTV component of our service.
This was promised to have been started a month ago.
When we call we get no fixed date and get told that they are still busy with the upgrade at other estates.
They don't care that many residents will be away during December.

To top it all we also pay them an SLA fee of R99pm, which is truly a slap in the face.
 
Glad that ATEC never really showed any interest in deploying fiber to our complex. Phoned them and they would send some information, never heard back from them. We should be getting our FTTH next year April with hopefully several ISP offerings. We are just down the road from Dekko Heights.
 
What is the contract with ATEC?
I'm sure there must be a clause that would enable the body-corporate to terminate the contract?
 
Thank you for posting, I'm considering moving to a complex who uses ATEC and I've been unable to find any pricing on their Fibre products.
 
MyBB contact for ATEC is dotVIBE. He only works in the Western Cape, but may be able to assist you with a contact etc.
 
Last edited:
Hi,

I'm dotvibe, got myself an ATEC registered nick so i can address threads like these.

I run the Western Cape branch of ATEC, but will help where possible.
 
If you could PM me with some specifics, i'd appreciate it. Then i can follow up for you.

Also, we are currently in transition with the moving of our breakouts to provide increased capacity and better prices. Estates such as Dekko Heights are generally provisioned on a Neotel link where the capacity is determined by the Estate's SLA contribution (unless there is sufficient takeup on faster linespeeds). ATEC generally signs a 3 - 5 year contract with backhaul providers, and this is making transition take longer than we would like.

So i'm aware that some of the pricing for the older estates require revisiting, but contact me and i'll see what we can do. I'm surprised by your comment about our service levels and that the fibre solution is a "screw up". Dekko Heights is an Active Ethernet deployment with an IPTV head end as far as i know. I know the IPTV gives issues, but conversion to RFoG comes at a significant cost, and serious infrasture changes. We are still talking to multichoice about this.



TheShadow said:
Hi,

I'm a resident at Dekko Heights residential estate in Midrand.
Since inception, we have been using ATEC as the internet, DSTV and telephone provider.

Our experience thus far has been utterly dreadful.
I have never dealt with a company so disinterested in the requirements of their clients.

Besides managing to screw up an end-to-end fibre solution, their service levels are shocking.
It doesn't matter whether you are an owner, Trustee or the managing agents themselves... ATEC refuses to engage on client issues, ignoring us for the bigger fish.

The largest capped product they offer is 120gigs with a maximum line speed of 10Mbps at around R1200pm.
The fastest uncapped product is a heavily shaped 5Mbps connection with a FUP of 180gigs for R750pm.
The FUP is brickwall.
Their systems are so archaic that they cannot offer anything more than this.

As the rules stand, we have no choice but to use their dreadful services.
I want to warn other members of the community to avoid any medium-size residential complex that has been cursed by this provider.

After begging them for 2 years to up their game, it's clear that they have no interest in progressing our estate.
We are now sitting with an investment in fibre infrastructure which is now worthless.

Has anybody else had any experience with this company?
If so, did you endure similar problems and how did you deal with issues?

This post is made in my personal capacity as an owner in the estate.

Many thanks
Aman
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
The seems more like a lack communication from ATEC towards their smaller customers.
Communication is king in the service industry. People want to be heard and responded to.
 
Hi Zeely,

that's a bit unfair isn't it? We deployed your scanner in May. Since then your estate has been averaging over 2000 scans a month, and we haven't had a support call from you since June. The offer to upgrade your scanner to the new model at no extra charge has caused me some headaches, and i apologize that it's taking so long to do the upgrade. The software is finally out of beta and i'm promised the shipment early next week. We had our demo at Mustek yesterday, and it went very well.


zeely said:
We deal with Atec on another front (ingress/egress management), and I have to admit that your statement of them only caring about bigger fish rings entirely true

I received this email on 17 Jul 2015

My apologies for the delay in the delivery of your new scanner. The scanner that was to be allocated to you out of our last delivery was unfortunately issued to the American Embassy in Pretoria as part of an emergency security upgrade. We will have new stock arriving at the end of next week, and can commission your scanner the week thereafter.

Today is 2 December 2015, and I still don't have a scanner

Definitely one of the more useless companies I've come across
Click to expand...
 
Last edited:
Quentin Legend said:
Thank you for posting, I'm considering moving to a complex who uses ATEC and I've been unable to find any pricing on their Fibre products.
Click to expand...

Due to the model of backhaul being in place in some of the older estates, and various other factors like takeup and SLA contribution, a lot of the estates have pricing customized to the particular estate. Send me a PM, and i'll organise you a pricelist.
 
Hi there,

Thanks so much for responding to me.
It's been a battle to get feedback on our queries and is leaving us feeling helpless against a company that doesn't care.

The implementation isn't matching up to the marketing.
It's an embarassment when I tell people that I have uncapped fibre but I cannot game on it.

I will send through details regarding our issues but you must understand that I am skeptical as we are being ignored by your CEO.

Please prove me wrong.

Kind regards
Aman
 
You're a gamer? Interesting. I happen to know that our Tier3 techs installed a host server for gaming in Teraco a couple of weeks ago. Games like DOTA and CS:GO will be hosted locally on the ATEC network as soon as testing and configuration is complete.

I look forward to hearing from you so i can investigate a bit.

TheShadow said:
Hi there,

Thanks so much for responding to me.
It's been a battle to get feedback on our queries and is leaving us feeling helpless against a company that doesn't care.

The implementation isn't matching up to the marketing.
It's an embarassment when I tell people that I have uncapped fibre but I cannot game on it.

I will send through details regarding our issues but you must understand that I am skeptical as we are being ignored by your CEO.

Please prove me wrong.

Kind regards
Aman
Click to expand...
 
Thanks :)

We haven't been informed about the gaming servers.

I'll write up a PM this evening. Hope to engage you on these issues and achieve some progress.

Kind regards
Aman
 
ATEC_CT said:
Hi Zeely,

that's a bit unfair isn't it? We deployed your scanner in May. Since then your estate has been averaging over 2000 scans a month, and we haven't had a support call from you since June. The offer to upgrade your scanner to the new model at no extra charge has caused me some headaches, and i apologize that it's taking so long to do the upgrade. The software is finally out of beta and i'm promised the shipment early next week. We had our demo at Mustek yesterday, and it went very well.
Click to expand...

You promised me my scanner 3rd week November. Before that You promised me my scanner in July. Now you're promising me a shipment next week. Which means best case scenario 3rd week December, but most likely only January 2016 - if at all.

You're quick to respond on a public forum, but you still haven't responded to my email when I asked where my scanner was?
 
Hi Zeely,

I've responded via email.

zeely said:
You promised me my scanner 3rd week November. Before that You promised me my scanner in July. Now you're promising me a shipment next week. Which means best case scenario 3rd week December, but most likely only January 2016 - if at all.

You're quick to respond on a public forum, but you still haven't responded to my email when I asked where my scanner was?
Click to expand...
 
Thank you for contacting me with your concern. I will follow up and get back to you as soon as possible. Hopefully these issues can be resolved without further delay.


TheShadow said:
Hi,

I've sent through the PM with some details regarding our issues.
Please have a look as soon as possible.

Many thanks
Aman
Click to expand...
 
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