Mweb Abuse Notification

Well I decided to cancel my MWEB account today. Not that I'm unhappy with them. On the contrary - their network service nowadays is pretty good. Their customer service and sales accumen sucks though - you have to deliver what you promise. It's that simple. Change your accounts to read 150Gb @ R 199, 300Gb @ R399 and 500Gb @ R599. Manage your network properly so that abusers simply can't put a strain on the network. It isn't that hard.

So on to why I'm cancelling - mostly for two reasons 1) To see what Openweb Gold is like and 2) to reset my possible ban from MWEB for serial linux distro downloads. That way I can explore what an alternative has to offer firstly and to secondly not burn my bridge there. If MWEB starts kicking people off their network at a high enough rate they are going to burn themselves. The situation should sort itself out pretty soon because either they are going to have to find a balance that suits most people or they are going to lose business.

The ISP / IT industry is extremely cut throat. If you start messing with your customer base loyalty you will quickly end up nowhere. RIM is a prime example of how not meeting the demands of your customers kills a company quickly.

So ta ta for now MWEB - you probably won't miss me but that doesn't mean I won't be back ;)
 
Superspeed, I find your comment about 150GB at R199 to be interesting. I am assuming that is the 1mbps offering and what they regard as "abuse". I have that package. I use a fair bit, and download a fair bit, and I manage around 60GB on average every month. I haven never got anywhere near 150GB.

I also see no reason to move as the 1mbps offering will not be affected. Also the Telkom offering is the same price.
 
@clintza
I used to average 150-180 on a 1mb (as was told by people who did it too) and never had a problem.
 
Care to expand on reason 2?

MWEB's warning period for abuse lasts three months. I have been using a 2Mb uncapped account in conjunction with a capped Afrihost account on a 10Mbps ADSL line for the last year or so and have constantly downloaded about 170Gb to 230Gb per month on the MWEB account using a router to split traffic - newshost & torrents to MWEB everything else to Afrihost (on a fast line I often get 350Kb/s+ downloads on a 2Mb uncapped line).

I have a certain amount of HD shows that I watch etc so that isn't going to change. I received a warning in the middle of December for abuse but my usage hadn't altered significantly.

Basically I'm not willing to change my usage pattern - I don't max the line 24/7. This excerpt from WebhostingTalk explains it nicely:

"The MATHEMATICAL maximum transfer of 1Mbps full duplex (megabit per second, or Mb/s) is roughly 320 gigabytes per month in each direction (320GB in and 320GB out). This is calculated from the number of seconds in a 30-day month multiplied by the number of bits in a megabit.

Seconds in a month (60 seconds in a minute * 60 minutes an hour * 24 hours a day * 30 days a month) or 2592000 * 1048576 bits = 2717908992000 bits or 316.40625 gigabytes in and out equals a total of 632 gigabytes. In and out mean the incoming and outgoing transfer of a port. Each way can use 316GB of transfer, with the "outgoing" transfer being the most predominantly used.

The REAL WORLD USAGE value of 1Mbps is much less than the mathematical value. Since it is based on several variables, it is impossible to state what your real use could be.

When calculating Mbps from GB, never use the 316GB value as it will almost never be anywhere near accurate. Always consider a conservative number such as 150-200GB per 1mbps outbound, as this is what the typical end-user's usage of bandwidth equates to."

Soooo to make a long story short I am going to go somewhere else for a while and let my abusive nature be all but forgotten by MWEB. If I like it out there I'll stay. If MWEB ends up the better option I'll be back - but I won't be within a "Your on a final warning mister!"
 
Superspeed, I find your comment about 150GB at R199 to be interesting. I am assuming that is the 1mbps offering and what they regard as "abuse". I have that package. I use a fair bit, and download a fair bit, and I manage around 60GB on average every month. I haven never got anywhere near 150GB.

I also see no reason to move as the 1mbps offering will not be affected. Also the Telkom offering is the same price.

What I mean by this is that they should have a downloader capped package and a professional capped package as well as a business package. The needs and demands of the three types of users are very different.

The Downloader package should have a high cap limit as stated but these gigs will be limited and affected exactly as the uncapped product is now which is to say shaped - which really isn't too bad atm. Having any sort of limit (even if it is much higher than the average user's monthly usage) creates a psychological effect or barrier on the user - If you know you are going to get capped when you go on a download binge you certainly won't download all 14 seasons of Gummi Bears for old times' sake, now would you?

Professional package is for people that don't download that much but want better latency and speeds. Give them a 3rd of the amount of gigs per month but with less contention and shaping so 50Gb at R199, 100Gb @ R399 and 150Gb @ R599

Then business users that have unshaped and uncontended bandwidth at the same price but with a 5th of the amount of bandwidth again. This will give them 30Gb at R199, 60Gb @ R399 and 100Gb @ R599.

You might say I'm crazy but if people are downloading 200Gb and paying R369 for that they are already paying less than R2 per gig per month so it won't affect their turnover AND we'll all be happy because we know what were getting in to AND it will stop abuse at the same time.

My 2c's worth.
 
I got my 1st letter today. Good timing Mweb. I will send you the goodbye letter tomorrow. Thanks for giving me a push to move to a better company.
Now who to choose, openweb or axxess? FNB can be my backup in the meantime.
 
@Superspeed

i'll bet you a case of beer you won't visit www.mweb.co.za ever again, after you get your OpenWeb logon details.
 
@Superspeed

i'll bet you a case of beer you won't visit www.mweb.co.za ever again, after you get your OpenWeb logon details.

I requested a trial account from Openweb at 10PM last night and received a 10Mb Openweb Gold trial account 20 minutes later. That's a great start!

So far it is very impressive indeed. You might be right! Lol :)
 
This really feels like false advertising.

How on earth do they justify saying it's uncapped when you can download too much? Uncapped means downloading as much as you want, when you want.

Luckily I am with PLuGG. Not having the same bull**** with them.
 
Ok, so just got a Mweb Abuse Notification number 2 which reads as follows: Your current ADSL usage pattern shows repeated instances of continuous bulk downloads over prolonged periods. My laptop is on 24/7 and downloading, after the first warning I set a limit on my download speed to half the speed (still 24/7) which clearly did not help. I now want to set up a scheduler so that it will only download as follows: From 17:00 - 22:00 at half speed and from 22:00 to 07:00 at full speed and then stop it between 07:00 and 17:00. Will the be acceptable for MWEB?

Nothing personal but no ISP wants you. ISPs exist to make money, they don't make money on people using the service 24/7. That simple, as I said nothing personal because this applies to many out there, it's just business.
 
Nothing personal but no ISP wants you. ISPs exist to make money, they don't make money on people using the service 24/7. That simple, as I said nothing personal because this applies to many out there, it's just business.

Except OpenWeb.
Since Mweb kicked me out, I have not had to "manage" downloads anymore. I just let them run.
Sometimes OpenWeb will throttle me down a little bit during the day, but mostly the not. Best ISP out.
 
Nothing personal but no ISP wants you. ISPs exist to make money, they don't make money on people using the service 24/7. That simple, as I said nothing personal because this applies to many out there, it's just business.

In that case they shouldn't have deceptively advertised their service as 'uncapped'.
 
Nothing personal but no ISP wants you. ISPs exist to make money, they don't make money on people using the service 24/7. That simple, as I said nothing personal because this applies to many out there, it's just business.

Then why do ISPs like Afrihost encourage such behaviour and even have a "Top 10" list of biggest downloaders?
 
I requested a trial account from Openweb at 10PM last night and received a 10Mb Openweb Gold trial account 20 minutes later. That's a great start!

So far it is very impressive indeed. You might be right! Lol :)

They never seem to sleep and welcome to the Openweb family. You will never look back and the only mails you will receive is promotions :whistle:
 
Except OpenWeb.
Since Mweb kicked me out, I have not had to "manage" downloads anymore. I just let them run.
Sometimes OpenWeb will throttle me down a little bit during the day, but mostly the not. Best ISP out.

That's great, you've found an ISP that suits your needs then - no problem there.

Then why do ISPs like Afrihost encourage such behaviour and even have a "Top 10" list of biggest downloaders?

Afrihost clearly has learned to deal with it in a less-serious manner ;)

In that case they shouldn't have deceptively advertised their service as 'uncapped'.

This I have a problem with. Advertising as uncapped subject to T&Cs and an AUP is not deceptive. Had they advertised without mentioning those two and then called you out on usage then I would say fair enough.

Do you know how much a product would cost if it was priced for everyone using full speed 24/7? Oh but not everyone uses if full speed 24/7; you want it so that only you and handful of other abusers can use it full speed 24/7 while the other 95% use normal or sub-normal amounts but still pay the same as you.
 
Do you know how much a product would cost if it was priced for everyone using full speed 24/7? Oh but not everyone uses if full speed 24/7; you want it so that only you and handful of other abusers can use it full speed 24/7 while the other 95% use normal or sub-normal amounts but still pay the same as you.
So the ISP makes money off the 95% of people who don't download 24/7 but they bitch and complain about the 5% who uses their uncapped accounts as it was meant to be used?
 
So the ISP makes money off the 95% of people who don't download 24/7 but they bitch and complain about the 5% who uses their uncapped accounts as it was meant to be used?
(emphasis added)

It was meant to be used in conjunction with the terms and conditions and acceptable use policy, lol

It's too soon after the days of pay-per-gig for us to be this ungrateful for accounts that give us data at less than R5 a gig
 
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