iBurst speed claims refuted – again

[rpm]

http://mybroadband.co.za/news/Wireless/842.html

 

[henno]

Last night i saw a commercial where they still advertise up to 17x faster than dialup...

 

[eltherza]

This month so far, I have yet to see a download speed faster than 10K/s on my iburst, even at 4am in the morning...

 

[Gatecrasher]

iBurst's wild performance exaggerations are exceeded only by their wild exaggerations of the amounts owed by their former clients.

 

[rpm]

Hi Gatecrasher

Are you owed money by them? We have received a few complaints about this...debit orders going off after service cancellations etc.

 

[Gatecrasher]

Hi Gatecrasher

Are you owed money by them? We have received a few complaints about this...debit orders going off after service cancellations etc.

No, but six months after cancelling I suddenly get a bill out of the blue for R1099 related to a monthly charge from mid 2006. This is after I had been through an exhaustive account reconcilliation with them in October (to fix up their numerous billing/debiting errors). There is no way they would have allowed me to cancel the service if I had amounts owing.

It is infuriating that I have to deal with this #@$! again. I just want to be shut of them.

But my story is not an isolated incident. Just vist the iBurst forum, and HelloPeter website and you can the problem is endemic. I wonder how many victims of this scam are paying these erroneous amounts without question.

Blaming it on sheer incompetence is just naive.

 

[simple_simon]

i still the see the "up to 17x faster" claim everyday on the telly....they have sponsored the weather and it ticker-tapes across the bottom of the screen constantly.

 

[Tns]

thank goodness i never got iburst! looks they do more bad than good lately

 

[milomak]

For the latter part of 2006 and 2007 till I cancelled I got speeds of 900kB/s+.

rpm - They did debit my account the month after my cancellation was effective. Though a quick email to them saw that reversed within two days. I also received a letter informing me of a missed March payment. Another email to them has confirmed that I infact owe them nothing. Which I was confident about as like Gatecrasher said I was sure they would have never let me cancel with amounts still outstanding on my contract.

To add to all that, when I moved house I reapplied for a month. And I specifically noted on the agreement and on the cover page that I already had a modem. Cue an invoice with the cost of a modem included. Though they never did deduct it.

 

[supersunbird]

All near future SA telecoms ads:

"You MIGHT be able to connect at SOME kind of speed"

 

[TheREV]

All near future SA telecoms ads:

"You MIGHT be able to connect at SOME kind of speed"

er, "up to" SOME kind of speed...

 

[Ekhaatvensters]

I think the guy who wrote in had some worse claims than iBurst did.

"Mr. Blom submitted that during the day iBurst caps its speed to 46kbps and that users are never able to reach speeds of more than 100kbps."

I would have laughed at his submission before taking it seriously? If those were meant to be KB/s it would make some sense. Any clarification on the article? I assume that 100kbps is not just during the day, as then it is capped at 46kbps, sounds like a lot of crap.

 

[GeometriX]

I'm not sure what other user's conditions are, but I consistently get download speeds of 115KB/s to 125KB/s. Sure, I'm a stone's throw from the nearest tower, which is apparently not that busy, but those are "nearly ideal conditions" and I'm getting the full 1Mbps (shy 3KB/s - not exactly anything to write home about). During the day, my speeds are somewhat poorer (60KB/s - 100KB/s), no doubt, but downloading in the evening is bliss.

Fair enough, most users don't get those speeds, but I can't believe I'm the only one who does.

 

[JTech]

I get 900kbits/sec off Little Falls and I know it is right because not many ppl in that area have iBurst. No basestation hop either.