ICRAP in breach !!!

You are not wrong. SA is as a general rule far to complacent for their own good. Our consumer rights bodies tend to be headed by old ladies with purple hair hair tints and too much time on their hands. When we do complain its because we are very angry and indignant, generally fueled by too many beers around the weekend braai. Come monday and we are too depressed/hung-over to be concerned about anything other than "why am I sitting behind this desk on a sunny day?" We laugh at the American's who sue for anything but then lash out at Telkom/WBS etc by saying "If this was in the States, you would be history, you piece of ....". SA, the land of opposites, duality and hypocrisy at times..

Things are changing though, the biggest change I have noticed is the Anti-Telkom backlash. Our unique situation is, when exercising our newly found consumer rights we have a problem. Cancel our crap service and go where? Telkom is omni-present, if I want a reasonably cheap (by SA standards) Internet and phone service, wherever I go, they get my business by default. WBS or Sentech? Jeesh, to pick my choice of operator, I need to make a list of negatives and choose who scores lower than the other?

Change is coming, it takes a a few strong personalities with a vision for a better future (which we have here) and 100's and 1000's of whiners like me :p
 
Darke, you're right we have a significant lack of choice... Still it is a choice to remain with WBS, so either shut-up or get together and do something about it...
  • Move directly to the evil (Telkom) or it's partners in crime (Vodacom and Sentech)
  • Take them on in the media, if it work's in USA why not here http://www.ipodsdirtysecret.com/. It will take commitment to get some action, and I'm sure we have a few talented minds in these forums who can put something similar together... You'll know when you've had some success once we got a SABC and ETV news slot...

Drinking beers, venting anger at WBS in forums, helps nobody... except maybe SAB's revenue... :D
 
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What is this forum for exactly if not to discuss ideas that each of us has, some of us might be endowed with instant enlightenment, whereas others might need a bit of discussion before reaching a parallel plane of enlightenment - that requires discussion - there are loads of threads where someone has fervently expressed an opinion 'x' and after some or many posts completely changed their mind to opinion 'y' as a result of engaging discussion.

Why not unite as consumers in discussion and debate [not necessarily in opinion], instead of trying to stomp out divergent opinions...?
 
ic said:
Why not unite as consumers in discussion and debate [not necessarily in opinion], instead of trying to stomp out divergent opinions...?
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Eggzakkery... but I'm open to a little more action, and a little less whining...
 
Well ok im coming from Macedonia south Europe..and i`m here in SA for 2 yrs.There i had DSL flat (no cap) 768D/128U before 2 yrs and i never,never had the connection to go bellow 750kbps...The network is not allowed there to block any protocol such a P2P...etc...and you have the full speed for all of them...I used to have speed on eMule from 50KB/s to 80KB/s all the time...but you see there you can download everything you like but you can keep it only in your HDD if u start resale or swop or give to someone program which is a copy police will come and take all your equipment..It has low for not copying anything but still you can do what ever you want on your PC you can download much as you want no blocking and stuff...and is legal until you keep it in your PC and not distributed to people...ok thats legal stuff not Iburst shaping..(Iburst is ilegall) for me!
 
Whining is action, if it is done in the right place and it has a point. One thing I have noticed about these forums is that there is very little "Doom-Saying", we bitch, moan and complain about just about everything but there is always someone who would make a practical suggestion to ensure that the complaints are actually the fault of our wonderful providers or an issue on your side. Not only that but the complaints give ammunition and information to those who do take the matter farther. This fight has a lot to do with concepts and even ideology and for testing a good ideology, there is nothing better than tons of complainants to strengthen yours.
 
And one more thing if you think that P2P is ilegall it wouldnt be the most common and one of the best feature of internet now and in the feature...and one of the fastest growing feature in the world...Look on Skype is a new tehnology which is working on P2P and there is many other P2P programs for video audio conferencing and stuff...so pls dont tell me that P2P is illegal....maybe only for this South Africa which is behind anything more than 10yrs...
 
rebel said:
Slimothy, ain't this the same guy that was laughing & praising WBS when we got suspended?
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lol yeah, amazing how quick thier opinions change
 
slimothy said:
lol yeah, amazing how quick thier opinions change
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Exactly my point, it is pointless trying to hammer one's own opinion into another forumite's head & try forcing them to agree with oneself, rather state your opinion, backup with factual evidence if necessary, debate other points of view & opinions, and hey presto, someone might actually agree where they previously did not, and if they still don't agree, well that is their right ;).
 
makedon, no one is saying its illegal, we're saying p2p filesharing almost always involves illegal filesharing. Look lers not beat around the bush, we use p2p to get free songs, movies, apps, games etc etc. there are other things floating around that are perfectly legal and you may only download those, but 90% of us have all downloaded the illegal type stuff, the technology isn't illegal and its a great new method of distrobution and a potential revenue stream for companies, but untill they all realise this the majority of peopel filesharing are doing so illegally.

The fact is, the topic name is misleading, they are not in breach and as was posted earlier, if this "cop" were to pursue this matter in court he would have a hard time proving it was or was not for illegal purposes.

I'm not a lawyer and won't claim to be to argue a point on the internet but what I do know is if craigsa were to pursue a civil matter the burden of proof would be on him and he would need to prove to a 51% extent that WBS were in breach (which he can't do since they aren't in breach) WBS however could do the same to him if they could proveto a 51% extent that he was responsible for loss, or misconduct that could cause loss (which is easy since they probably have logs of him downloading soem kylie song once apon a time and could say that song was copyrighted and therefor illegal to download and that they could be sued if this song was to be found cached on thier hardrives)

so basically, it seems to me its a losing battle, not a chance in hell of winnign or even gettign past the front door
 
Simply put they can't be in beach over this, their contract says they will shape and de-prioritize P2P. There is not even a claim over false advertising as they stated this in their contract and by signing it we agreed. Perhaps a case exists against them for flouting the very idea on of what the Internet is based on, namely the free transmission of data and knowledge but really, who is going to ever agree to try that stupid angle? P2P will not be a issue if Telkom did not exist or bandwidth was freely available, as with so many issues here is all comes back to our favorite monopoly holding the purse strings.

Slim, logs of our usage? Now that would be an illegal act on WBS's side would it not? Of course the logs do exist, but producing them as evidence? :rolleyes: Well, on second thoughts they did disconect people too. :p
 
couldnt agree more...

anyone who believes they were going to have 1mb p2p usage on the 3gb iburst package obviously failed to do the relevant research before purchasing the product and now to make these absurd claims of taking wbs to court perhaps solidifies their ignorance and failure to comply with the simple task of reading the contract and terms of the package.

to now come on this forum venting and perhaps looking for some kind of leverage for your utter failure to comply with above mentioned facts is pretty much fruitless and really just causes uneccessary traffic and vast amounts of superfluous comments that really lead no where but discussions that end up going in large circles thereby lowering the quality of what really makes this forum a valid forum.

I value anyone's oppinion, but when oppinion is driven by a sense of ' i was lied to' when real world evidence and scenario actually spells out: ' i was too lazy to research the product' perhaps then one can suggest that the valued oppinion is no more the a person crying because of their failures. and to subject hundreds of us to this constant dribble of just how ineffecient your ability to make a sound decision with regards to the purchase of broadband is simply a waist of your money and your time.

may i suggest to the 'cop' that they perhaps reserve the energy to preventing the rampant crime in our country?
 
Well for some unknown reason the iBurst packages page no longer works for me in IE6 (I don't have Flash installed for FireFox & I want to keep it that way), so I cannot get a direct link to the Terms & Conditions for all/any of the packages...:( I wanted to add a link to the FAQ thread...
 
Darke said:
Our consumer rights bodies tend to be headed by old ladies with purple hair hair tints and too much time on their hands. When we do complain its because we are very angry and indignant, generally fueled by too many beers around the weekend braai.
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I suspect and submit that your blatant and indignant disregard for the intelectual capability of old ladies with purple hair tints are also fuelled by too many beers around the weekend braai and that you have thusly commited the very indignation you are attributing to South Africans.

Am I being facetious? Yes. My point? I don't think I have any.
 
lol.. When I used such a generalized model of the average beer swilling, red faced South African and their blatant disregard for the intellectual ability of the youth challenged, fashion oblivious, purple hair brigade, I did include hypocrisy and nowhere did I say I didn't include myself there :p
 
Darke said:
lol.. When I used such a generalized model of the average beer swilling, red faced South African and their blatant disregard for the intellectual ability of the youth challenged, fashion oblivious, purple hair brigade, I did include hypocrisy and nowhere did I say I didn't include myself there :p
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I wasn't disputing it :P

/me blames it on the scotch

(ps. my IRC, HTTPS and anything except p2p has just been working fine ever since day one )
 
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