MWEB Abuse nonsense -

Status
Not open for further replies.
J

joeyhza

Senior Member
Joined
May 18, 2008
Messages
935
Reaction score
0
Location
Cape Town
So got to work at 10am and had a surprise waiting in my inbox.






Dear MWEB Customer

This email serves as a notice regarding your MWEB ADSL service and follows from our earlier telephone discussion with yourself.

Your current ADSL usage pattern indicates that you have not been adhering to our ADSL Service Terms, specifically our ADSL Acceptable Usage Policy, provided to you when you subscribed to our ADSL service.

As a result we strongly advise you to upgrade to one of our Business or Unshaped products that will better suit your requirements. Should you not adhere to this request, you leave us no choice but to have your account terminated in line with our ADSL Service Terms.

To read more on our ADSL Service Terms, please click here.

If you wish to discuss this matter further, reply to this email or contact us on 021 596 8996.

Kind regards
MWEB Operations




What are my options? Will they really cancel my service? I've not had 'much' problems with MWEB - the smaller issues certainly dont compare to this new tactic employed by the ISP.
Clearly its become apparent i need to move my business elsewhere - can other mybroadband members recommend another more or less reliable ISP with more or less the same price for 4096 Uncapped?
Whatever happened to what you see is what you get? I mean, uncapped=download as much as you want/can/need/dont want/dont need...regardless...right??? Or have i lost the plot somewhere along the uncapped race?

I need other ISP options please please
Cheers and Thanks in advance.
 
Lets say they terminate, just go make another account on someone elses name.. and pay them monthly? Thats what I'm gonna do
 
It's about HOW you use the service, NOT how much you've downloaded.
 
Average 600GB - still though - its uncapped so amount of GB's used shouldnt be the issue surely - that goes against the whole UNCAPPED definition.
 
HOW you use the service? I mean its an always on internet connection - is there now etiquette for using the internet??? If so what exactly are the Do's and Don'ts?
I'm 99.99999% positive MWEB i got flagged because of amount of data downloaded - Nothing more - its absolutely ridiculous.....and to think i recommended MWEB to all my buddies of which most of them signed up after all my excellent praise - very disheartening indeed.
 
You can't say we didn't warn you. This was Mweb's modus operandi the last time they offered free unlimited local internet... and it was spelled out pretty harshly in their terms and conditions that they reserved the right to cut people off.

I agree... it is not really uncapped internet... and I think you should take Mweb to the Advertising Standards Authority.

But yeah... it was just a matter of time before people started receiving warning letters and letters of suspension. If anyone wants to carry on arguing now that this is a "true uncapped" service... here is the evidence otherwise.
 
joeyhza said:
HOW you use the service? I mean its an always on internet connection - is there now etiquette for using the internet??? If so what exactly are the Do's and Don'ts?
I'm 99.99999% positive MWEB i got flagged because of amount of data downloaded - Nothing more - its absolutely ridiculous.....and to think i recommended MWEB to all my buddies of which most of them signed up after all my excellent praise - very disheartening indeed.
Click to expand...
How exactly did you download that 600GB?Did you bypass MWEB's shaping protocol's?
I would like to think that MWEB's issue with you is not the fact that you downloaded 600GB's but what tools you used to do so.
 
SabreWolfy said:
It's about HOW you use the service, NOT how much you've downloaded.
Click to expand...


No it is about how much you have downloaded. to get 600gb that must be pretty much 24/7 maxxing the line on some form of anti shape :D. So by getting high usage you would need to break their T & C

Dude in all honesty that is slightly excessive hey, it may be uncapped and blah blah but 600gb :eek: that is heavy dude. It was only about 4 months ago a single gb was costing 19 bucks.

Gary you have no idea what is going on dude, people are bypassing their shaping things and consuming loads of bandwidth. I am thinking anyone that is going at 300+gb's will be cut. At least i hope :D. They shape during the day so everyone has a good experience, The really odd thing is my uncapped work better for browsing at night than in the day.
 
Last edited:
joeyhza said:
HOW you use the service? I mean its an always on internet connection - is there now etiquette for using the internet??? If so what exactly are the Do's and Don'ts?
I'm 99.99999% positive MWEB i got flagged because of amount of data downloaded - Nothing more - its absolutely ridiculous.....and to think i recommended MWEB to all my buddies of which most of them signed up after all my excellent praise - very disheartening indeed.
Click to expand...

Did you bypass their shaping?
 
This is from 2008....

In February 2008 Mweb began a trial to offer unlimited local bandwidth to all of its subscribers. There was no limit and no charge for its use. They promised to inform their customers by e-mail when the trial was over. They finally sent that e-mail on the 1st of April 2009 and officially ended the trial. From now on they will only offer 10 Gigabytes of local access and will charge 3 cents for every megabyte over that.

That is all well and good, but there were several problems with this process...

1) The announcement was made without fair warning (on the first of the month) not giving users enough time to cancel the service, and thereby in effect forcing another month's charge on them (May 2009).

2) Mweb began calling users who had made heavy use of the service and suspended their accounts for this "heavy usage". Those who have been using more than 500 Gigabytes of local bandwidth a month have had their accounts suspended without any warning and despite the fact that this was an "unlimited service". Whether or not you believe that this is heavy usage, the fact is there was no warning and no limit placed on the accounts.

3) Mweb has been giving confusing statements about the service for months now. People who called Mweb were told that there was no limit, or that there was a 10Gb limit. they were told that the trial had ended and that it had not ended and it seems like even the Mweb customer service agents had no clue what was going on.

4) In limiting and restricting the local bandwidth Mweb is going against the regulations published by ICASA in 2006. to whit “Local bandwidth usage shall not be subject to the cap.” by placing a charge of 3 cents per megabyte on local usage Mweb is in effect "capping" the service by making it unaffordable to the average user.

5) On the 26th March 2009, Mweb General Manager Natalie Thayer was interviewed by the www.mybroadband.co.za website and stated "MWEB ADSL subscribers will be glad to hear that there are no plans as yet to discontinue unlimited local traffic. MWEB customers will therefore still be able to access all local content despite the status of their overall cap." This was one week before Mweb decided to change the service and start charging for it. This statement was misleading and blatantly designed to lull the subscribers into a false sense of security. She should have instead given the subscribers fair warning that the service was about to be changed.

6) Mweb remains one of the most expensive ISPs in South Africa typically charging 10 to 30% more for their services than most other ISPs. In this case the charge for local bandwidth (beyond the 10Gb free allowance) amounts to R30 per gigabyte. You can buy local access from some ISPs for as low as R10 or R15 per gigabyte! Even Telkom themselves offer 10, 20 or 30 Gigabytes free local access depending on your International cap and they rarely charge for any usage beyond that.

7) The whole issue of capping in general is a sore point with South African Internet users. While most Internet Users worldwide enjoy no caps or large caps of up to 250 Gigabytes we in South Africa are still stuck with an average cap of 3 Gb for our international access. This capping policy is ludicrous and has stifled broadband growth and innovation in South Africa. By making this move to restrict local access Mweb is supporting Telkom's policy of restrictive capping and charging users excessively for accessing what should be a free resource - the local internet!

...so yeah... this is all very much Deja Vu! :p
 
Noped - just straight up scheduled downloads from direct http and megaupload - no porn - i get my porn from tons of other sources so no need to download any.
And i didn't use any method of bypassing their shaping protocols at all - so no tools used there.

How would filing a complaint with the ASA help me in any way?
 
killadoob said:
No it is about how much you have downloaded. to get 600gb that must be pretty much 24/7 maxxing the line on some form of anti shape :D. So by getting high usage you would need to break their T & C

Dude in all honesty that is slightly excessive hey, it may be uncapped and blah blah but 600gb :eek: that is heavy dude. It was only about 4 months ago a single gb was costing 19 bucks.

Gary you have no idea what is going on dude, people are bypassing their shaping things and consuming loads of bandwidth. I am thinking anyone that is going at 300+gb's will be cut. At least i hope :D. They shape during the day so everyone has a good experience, The really odd thing is my uncapped work better for browsing at night than in the day.
Click to expand...
Perhaps, although I have to admit that even if I downloaded 24/7 on a 4MEG line the best I would probably do is about 300GB's the way MWEB is currently shaping.
 
killadoob said:
Gary you have no idea what is going on dude, people are bypassing their shaping things and consuming loads of bandwidth. I am thinking anyone that is going at 300+gb's will be cut. At least i hope :D. They shape during the day so everyone has a good experience, The really odd thing is my uncapped work better for browsing at night than in the day.
Click to expand...

Mweb have repeatedly gone on record here and in other sources as saying "you can download as much as you want". We all knew that the warning letters and suspensions were going to come sooner or later.
 
Like i said no bypassing - just smart downloading thats all - they dont shape HTTP so my download sources were mostly Direct HTTP and the occassional megaupload - which is shaped from my understanding - what i dont get is all you guys apart from a few are mentioning the fact that i've downloaded quite a few gigabyte - point is - that SHOULDNT matter in the least - its UNCAPPED - 600GB is not excessive - if thats what my line and ISP can accommodate than why not!
 
It won't help, it says anyone abusing the account will be remove from the service.

You abused the account and thus you best go check out openweb gold. the T and C clearly state that 600gb would be a problem, they may not say it like that but read between the lines and it is fairly clear.
 
Last edited:
joeyhza said:
Noped - just straight up scheduled downloads from direct http and megaupload - no porn - i get my porn from tons of other sources so no need to download any.
And i didn't use any method of bypassing their shaping protocols at all - so no tools used there.

How would filing a complaint with the ASA help me in any way?
Click to expand...

Mweb advertises the account as "uncapped" ... but by telling you that you have used too much... and they are gonna cut you off... they show that they never really intended for it to be true uncapped.

it is therefore false advertising... and a case for the ASA.
 
garry lekker big mouth over at openweb.... why don't you put your gaping hole at asasa and make an example complaint ?, btw isn't int standards moving over to a 200/300 gig cap for uncapped ?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X