ITweb Article

flyboy

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http://www.itweb.co.za/sections/telecoms/2004/0406151157.asp?A=MAW&S=Mobile%20and%20Wireless%20Technology&O=FPT
 
So they did buy more bandwidth to fix the problem. Funny how that Smith moron mentions that he handled 52 complaints as though to suggest that those were the only complaints. I guess the call centre never got any complaints then ... The mailbox must have been spammed by them Nigerian scammers from Sunnyside
 
malec... anyone trying to get hold of Winston Smith these past months would have noticed that he had switched off his
cell phone (he didn’t take messages either) and that he had not replied to email messages. Those 52 complaints were received when he was confronted in the streets of JHB. [:D]

<font color="blue">Bay of Plenty: </font id="blue"><font size="1"><font color="black"> Signal 46% - SNL 17 - ber 71%
</font id="size1"></font id="black">
 
As usual the article is riddled with rubbish. Use of kbps instead of KBps is just wrong for ITWeb. 52 complaints = &lt; 5% so what happened to the 1% figure? Also, lets assume 52 = 2.5% of users so then we have at most 2000 users. Man they really must have bought very little bandwidth (16kbps * 2000 = 32Mbps)

And worst of all.. no mention of the freakin forum URL..

Sentech needs to wake up.. anyone can go and register more defamitory URLs. They should really just ignore it like the ignore everything else. After handing over the domain name TheRoDent can quite simply just register www.sentechiscrap.co.za (or anyone else) so whats the big deal.

I bet if they saw the forum URL become public they would try get it taken down as well since it can and will do much more damage than a silly domain name.
 
The key is to have one or two domains (out of many) held by different people, it means that Sentech would have to divide their efforts to get rid of every "bad" Sentech URL. This would be financially unviable.
 
What we need to decide on is which domains are best to be registered, then put content up about the problems and then get it on ananzi.co.za - do good work on the META tags so that anybody typing mywireless gets to these sites...
 
Best hope your wife (if you have one) doesnt read the post [:p]

Sounds good BUT all this bothers me. Let me explain why. Well, assuming you get the article in print and give them bad publicity.. knowing the South African mindset, nobody will want to buy into Sentech MyWireless. Sure, this is not your goal but we know people. Then the subscriber base will not grow and we wont get more towers (reduced mobility) and there wont be any growth in available bandwidth.

My suggestion is to be very careful about how you go about this. We need people to keep signing on.

Before you do anything rash, get 100 separate confirmations from MyWireless users (like a written list/petition) then also contact Sentech or their legal representation directly before printing an article. We know that they are media-sensitive due to the current domain situation. Othwerwise it will seem like you or a handful of people are having issues. Judged by the quietness in the forums (and you being a long time forumite should be aware of this by now) people are pretty happy with what they are getting. I must say that while Im not stressing my connection, right now I am getting maximum speed with maximum uptime (ie. perfect service) but I know that it wont last long and that when it breaks - it will be a long time before it is fixed again.

Contact that journalist, not necessarily to discredit his article or anything but perhaps to inform him of the difference between bits-per-second and bytes-per-second (the article does a small unfair injustice to sentech because of this) and also alert him of the forum and get him to read through the info and perhaps become a member.

About the lawyer stuff.. Its fairly obvious that Sentech dont have a leg to stand on. They are probably just barking loudly to chase away people like TheRoDent (their bite came before the barking).

The lies etc that you speak of are 100% true and the hypocritical and contradictory nature of the reported information is something that needs to be addressed. We all have a hell of a long time left in our contracts so we need the assurance that it will be a comfortable place. Look at the DSTV model, also a monopoly but you dont hear people moaning all the time (since they give relatively good service while still ripping the customer off mercilessly)

Try take your modem to another tower and compare performance. Also, we are going to need a way to bypass the call centre and call 2nd level directly since when there is a speed issue with a particular tower you typically get the contention ratio brushoff when there is actually a problem. I have experienced my full 16KB/sec at all manifestations of "peak-time" so there is no excuse for lack of bandwidth or speed from the call centre.

LoneGunman, it looks like you must call shotgun on www.sentechblows.co.za so you can also get in on the action [:p]
 
I agree in a sense with "FLYGUY" but.........

Lets look at it from a new user perspective........ i never knew of the forum..... thought they would supply a better service than ADSL so took the plunge and signed the CONTRACT......

Got excited ...... fought to get contract approved.......... and the magic day arrives..... the MODEM.....

Well since there it has been downhill......used all bandwidth searching to find out how to get the "BLERRIE" thing to work...... found MYADSL.CO.ZA and realised i aint the only one suffering.... one difference is the support from everyone here (THANKS Everyone)

Lets take what i know now and go back 2 weeks....... i would have gone for ADSL with the cap but would have known what i was getting into....

So do we look at the problem and say lets get more people neck deep in the brownstuff or do we try and can our contracts or get rebates......I know there is no other alternative for "Broadband Wirelessly" but my telkom account was less and had decent speeds.

So there is my five cents...... if it is not working.....IT IS NOT FxxxxING WORKING .... no greya area
 
See like me, a lot of people are experiencing super good service i.t.o speed and so forth (not helpdesk obviously) so they wont agree with you. One day when your turn comes, you will get good speed. Then you will also be a happy customer and way happier than with Telkom or ADSL ever. And you're in the contract so you are already 'trapped' like all of us.

If you can arrange rebates let me know. Im in no hurry to cancel my contract since I sue the connection every damn day with my http servers and ftp/mail servers and and and.. [:)]
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by greedyflyza</i>
<br />My suggestion is to be very careful about how you go about this. We need people to keep signing on.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
Do we REALLY want people to keep signing on to a company that thinks that lying to customers for months is OK? That already tried to get away with providing too little bandwidth? That still won't apologise, won't provide rebates, still refuses to give a *clear* explanation of what happened, won't take responsibility, *needed* to be prodded into action to fix the problems with "sentechsucks" domains and mainstream media articles, and *still* seem openly irritated by the idea that they should 'have to' provide an explanation about all of this to their customers (accusing them of 'bribery' for wanting not even a rebate but a proper explanation)? Instead they give very vague and unapologetic explanations, and they seemed to view fixing the problems as something they only "had to do" "in exchange" for the domains, rather than fixing the problems out of an interest in improving their product customer service. Would they have taken the steps they have if it weren't for the domains? They still don't say if they really have "enough" bandwidth to provide all their users with the advertised speeds, so I suspect they don't. So I don't know if I agree - I'm sorry to say it, but does a company that behaves like that deserve to remain in the market? This does not give me the impression of a company whose management is interested in long-term reform, as their user base grows they'll quite possibly push the limits of underproviding BW again. Amazing that SA telecomms is in such a state that we desperately want companies like this to do well simply for fear of the alternatives.

Of course I hope they do improve their service in the long-term, and of course I hope they stop their policy of lying to customers at the call center, and I hope they learn from this that customers will not just accept underproviding of bandwidth, and so on. But it won't happen if we all just blindly keep subsidising them no matter how they behave just because we're terrified of the rubbishy alternatives. We'll end up stuck with Telkom-like companies forever. Better to just let bad companies die - sooner or later they'll learn and then good companies *will* start to appear.

Not that I'm judging Sentech as "bad", I'll still give them a chance, it's still early. My speed fortunately never deteriorated to below 3-4kb/s like some, it was mostly 'so-so', and is generally around 10KB/s at the moment, so by and large the product has been useful to me.
 
The troubling thing is that Sentech prefers to spend money the lawyers, rather than spend it on client service.

This is typical of the big corporates: They use the legal system to destroy all opposition financially.

They know that few, if any, of their clients can afford to spend the fees of single consultation with an attorney and advocate.

What an easy way to enforce client satisfaction!



South Africa needs World Class Broadband at World Competitive Prices.
 
As far as journalistic integrity I would rate IT-Web the same as Incredible Deception for IT retailing.

It's all about advertising ........

Package :256
Tower :36 Bedfordview
Signal : 11
S-N-L : 4
BER : 28%
Antenna : Patch - Batenna
Speedtest (Rodent): 138.6
Speedtest (int) : 79.2
Time of Test :20:02
Comments : Dang !

Pass the whiskey please! I need to dunk my Pringles ....
 
<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Sentech wants to play with lawyers? I'm very willing to put money together into a kitty with others, to approach a suitably net-savvy lawyer or advocate, with a view to suing Sentech for: false advertising <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

This isn't really my fight, since I've always got what I've paid for, but
if you seriously looking at false advertising, you're strongest claim at the moment is the nowire site http://www.nowire.co.za/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=169

It states the packages there as follows 64K-128K /128K-256K /256K-512K.
We've all seen it, I just saved the Page to my drive if anyone needs it later once its been taken down.

So, according to that site, the min one should see on any package is 64Kb, yes, they arent sentech, but they are a part of the marketing campaign, if you don't come right with Sentech, sue nowire!
GOOD Luck
 
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