Greedy MWeb Charges for Local bandwidth

T

technofool

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I have sent an email to MWeb informing them that I am not in a position to pay more than my R199 per month and that they should cut me off before they charge me anything extra.

Failing to hear from them I will assume that they have graciously allowed me extra gratis bandwidth, like the horrible Telkom does for their customers. I can't get through to the MWeb Call Centre. Calls go round and round the voice-menus and then get dropped.

I think that the greedy little bloodsucking business ticks have realised that in June / July their R99 per GB Booster revenue will plummet when Seacom goes live and international bandwidth prices drop. Now they need to find a different place to bite us to suck their blood and they chose to sink their teeth into the 'local only' stream. Most of the local traffic (JHB-CPT-DBN) runs on their own network and costs them the same for 1MB per day or 1 000 000 MB per day. Same as when you watch a movie on your PC it uses 2% of CPU, it costs no more than ripping your favorite DVD which uses 100% of your Core2 CPU.

Once you have paid for the hardware it costs the same to run it at 2% or 100%. (extra electricity costs less than 0,1c per hour)

Now the question is 'How do we avoid being beaten like rented ponies by these gluttonous little blood suckers?'

I'm glad you asked. The answer is Collective Bargaining.

Let's say we spread the word widely and we get 1000 people to join our 'Collective Bargaining Club'. Then we put out a tender for a 384k and a 4Meg product and see which ISP can give us the best deal for our club members. Every 3 months we can re-tender as our member numbers grow.

If they can divide us they can conquer us, otherwise we rule.

Let me know what you think.
 
technofool said:
I have sent an email to MWeb informing them that I am not in a position to pay more than my R199 per month and that they should cut me off before they charge me anything extra.

Failing to hear from them I will assume that they have graciously allowed me extra gratis bandwidth, like the horrible Telkom does for their customers. I can't get through to the MWeb Call Centre. Calls go round and round the voice-menus and then get dropped.
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Good luck with that. Hope it doesnt bite you in the you-know-where. Without some confirmation from them that they have accepted or even received your proposal I'm not sure I would risk it personally.
 
bwana said:
Good luck with that. Hope it doesnt bite you in the you-know-where. Without some confirmation from them that they have accepted or even received your proposal I'm not sure I would risk it personally.
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+1

You signed something to get the account in the first place. So unless they reply to you, the contract terms still apply.

Email is frightfully unreliable :rolleyes:
 
Count me in. 384k line, unlimited local. I have tried my luck with the collective bargaining thing. Pitched the idea to Openweb, but they reckon IS (cheap though it is) is running close to cost already.

I don't quite believe that, so we can try again or elsewhere. The more "collective bargaining" we have, the better.
 
they're not allowed to cap local, you'll have to take it up with ICASA.
just stop when it gets to 10 gig of local use, don't assume they'll cap you coz they won't, and prolly have no problem billing you R3 for every meg you go over. unless ofcourse you mean gracious that they're not capping your international access, in that case i say go for it
 
Srack0verflow said:
they're not allowed to cap local, you'll have to take it up with ICASA.
just stop when it gets to 10 gig of local use, don't assume they'll cap you coz they won't, and prolly have no problem billing you R3 for every meg you go over. unless ofcourse you mean gracious that they're not capping your international access, in that case i say go for it
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Legality and ICASA never bothered Telkom for the last 10 years, they are still capping with gay abandon today.

I got no reply to my email from MWeb, so I had to phone them. And that is exactly what Germaine said, 'ICASA said it is illegal to cap local so you must disconnect yourself if you think R30/GB is too expensive for local only.'

How do I do that? MWeb doesn't give you the tools to do that and they refuse to accept NetLimiter as accurate. I get 10GB local, I want to use my 10GB local but how do I disconnect at exactly 10GB usage?? MWeb usage tracker is per session and sometimes hours behind realtime. I could be hundreds of megs over 10GB before the session ends and the tracker is updated. So you will charge me for something I can't prevent?

Yes sir.

Will you give me some grace like Telkom allows 6GB after their 10GB just for in case?

No sir. You are the first customer to complain about this, hardly anyone uses the local 10GB.

So what you are saying is that either I don't use what you have given me or I go over then I need to pay extra?

Yes.
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Anyway to Germaine's credit, it looks like he will sort out 2 items on my bill and his manager will call me on Monday to explain why they make it impossible for me to do the right thing.

I'm tired of being treated like a sucker.

All this because the slimy lawyers chose to interpret ICASA regulation 'all local traffic is to be free' as in free as a bird and not as we all know they meant which free as in 'gratis en verniet'. Clever little lawyers, kicked ICASA and SA internet in the nuts for 10 years.
 
Garyvdh, I have much bigger plans in mind for MWEB (famous for R145 dialup account). They deserve more consideration than just losing 1 R200pm customer, they will only hear if they lose many customers at once. The differences between the various ISPs is so small that it hardly justifies the forms and phone calls to move accounts. We deserve better. You have read More Broadband Bang.

If it is good enough for the Greeks, we deserve as good as them. Just check what they get for R200pm. Why do we put up with less? Everyone tells us our high telecoms costs are holding the country back. There are millions of our people living in cardboard and plastic houses who would love to have a job but the small businessman can't grow his business and create jobs because he has to pay R5000 pm phone and internet bill.

Checkout my post here.

I think this could really work.
 
technofool said:
All this because the slimy lawyers chose to interpret ICASA regulation 'all local traffic is to be free' as in free as a bird and not as we all know they meant which free as in 'gratis en verniet'. Clever little lawyers, kicked ICASA and SA internet in the nuts for 10 years.
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Unfortunately there is no ICASA ADSL regulation that says that.
 
nah, I think you are wasting your time. The only language they understand is cancellation.
 
@Bwana Don't make us suffer. You obviously know the license conditions more intimately. What is the 'local only' fight all about then?

@Garyvdh I'm watching you. 12 000 posts, probably more then 240 000 reads (maybe 1 000 000), you have a farking good idea of what is going on in the SA IT/Telecoms world. I want to nominate you for the Collective Bargaining Club Committee. The rest of you checkout this post. Garyvdh, you know what I'm talking about. And Bwana you are next for the committee nomination. There are some serious heavy hitters hiding behind their nicks on this board. Guys who sign million rand checks every month, guys who go toe to toe with Dimension Data and bigger, I know some of you and I will out you. :D We need your help and guidance on the Collective Bargaining Club Committee.
 
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technofool said:
@Bwana Don't make us suffer. You obviously know the license conditions more intimately. What is the 'local only' fight all about then?
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The regulation in all its vagueness goes something like "Local bandwidth usage shall not be subject to the cap". AFAIK ICASA has never "clarified" this or any of the rest of the appalling set of regulations so Telkom et al are free to interpret them as they see fit.
 
yep, thats how i understood the rulling.local should be uncapped, and uncapped doesnt 'nessy' mean it's free. perhaps oneday when we get to the point where there's enough fibre in the local loop the monthly allowance idea will fall away?
as for mweb, they had a chance and they messed it up, we all knew their free local trail wouldn't last forever and it was only a matter of time before an allowace/fine would be introduced, when that happened in my opinion condision were ideal to compete with the others. imagine if they decided small changes like giving 15 gig local to every 1 gig of international and a r24 fine, i would seriously consider moving over to them, but no they decided to go for giving all their users 10 and create a r30/gig fine, so much for competing with your rivals eh
 
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this sounds like Mweb alright. I left them last month as soon as that damn contract expired. You can do what you want, Mweb won't budge. I tried and tried but failed every time. You would've spent less time moving your account than it would take trying to get through to them.
 
Simple.

Cancel your contract with Mweb and move over to a prepaid system (eg Axxess) where you use what you pay for, and when your bandwidth's used up, you're hardcapped automatically.

No surprise bills will be lurking for you in your postbox :D
 
@ The Librarian and Garyvdh

A single customer closing his account and moving to another provider does not encourage change it just creates churn. The cell phone companies, the banks, the ISPs all survive happily with this customer churn because they gain as many customers as they loose as all the unhappy customers move their accounts.

Notice how all the 384K/1GB accounts cost R199. How much competition does that indicate, and how much choice do you really have? You can choose any ISP but a 384K/1GB account will still cost you R199.

We need to coordinate our action. Right now there is no best account, they are all pretty much the same:

MWEb R199 for 384k line + 1GB International + 10GB Local + free locked modem + 300 wifi minutes
Axxess R198 No free local, no free modem, no free wifi minutes
Telkom R199 1,5GB International, 15GB Local, no free modem without 2 year contract, no free wifi minutes
WebAfrica R199 no free local, no free wifi, free dial-up

That doesn't look like competition to me. R199 might be the best possible price but we can't be sure of that. If we get a Collective Club going with 5000 members and none of the ISPs can drop below R199 then we can assume that there is not much wiggle room in their profit margins.

But we already know that ISPs are prepared to negotiate cheaper deals with larger corporates.
 
Mwebs free router wouldn't be a consumers first choice. A senior administrator I was working with described it as "Cute but completely and utterly useless"
 
Finally got a reply email from MWEB and it is a very different answer to what I got when I called the call center for 48minutes to get clarity. They told me exactly 1GB blended, no more, then exactly 10GB local only, no more, then 3c per MB thereafter, no exceptions. If you don't disconnect your modem before 10GB local is up, you get charged for any overrun.

Can you please confirm that with the senior manager?

Yes sir (on hold 8mins) Hello, that is the way the new billing works.



This email sounds more encouraging to me.

Dear Mr Nofool
Thank you for taking the time to contact us.
Please be informed that you are on a capped booster which means that when you have reached your limits you connection will stop and no other costs should be incurred. To view your options please proceed to http://myadsl.mweb.co.za.
Please contact us should you require any further technical assistance.
Kind regards,
Ernest Stripp
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I think my english is fairly good and to me that email means that I can keep downloading until MWEB disconnects me and all I pay is the usual R199 for the month. Now it only remains to see where they pull the plug.
 
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