MWEB Uncapped ADSL - Unofficial Q

[king_kraig]

Hi xrapidx

This is not true, our product is and will remain uncapped.
The only customers that were disconnect was those that bypassed our shaping rules and AUP and opted to cancel instead of going onto a internet addict package.


Regards
MWEB Operations

Rubbish. Prove that I've been bypassing your shaping policies... You can't so you just drop the banhammer. Ain't my fault if you missed some protocols...

 

[SabreWolfy]

ok so what happened to freedom of expression? whoever, quit deleting my posts. MWEB got you by the short & curlies?

ROFL! Only mods can delete posts, so you work it out.

 

[SabreWolfy]

Thats part of the problem Sabre, they are saying one thing but actually implementing something else as has been linked in the correspondance provided. I'm all for disconnections for bypassing shapping etc but disconnection from plain usage and conforming to the shaper is not right and goes against their advertisements. I don't have the usage I think to fall into the disconnection pool but if it happens to me, they will cancel the account, I will shift and I will see them at the ASA.

I'll support Mweb for as long at they make it feasable but a fork tongue grates me from anyone or thing.

I promised myself I would not get back into this discussion If you read the T&C and the MWeb posts you'll see that bypassing shaping is ONE way of contravening the T&C. The other way is to constantly max out the line 24/7/365. This is covered where the T&C say something about placing excess load on the network, etc.

I'll agree that it is a fine line they are walking though: you get an uncapped account, you DON'T contravene the T&C (by way of bypassing shaping), but you queue up HTTP downloads to run at max line speed 24/7/365. You are "downloading as much as you want" on an uncapped, unlimited (as later advertising calls it) account, yet you are somehow contravening the T&C.

I think we need to once again give MWeb some credit. No company willing goes out of it's way to alienate it's users. All companies want lots of happy clients. We don't know the details of the individual cases -- and rightly so; the details are between MWeb and the client and only the client knows how they've used their connection. Having said that, for MWeb to take such drastic action against it's own clients suggest that they know what they are doing and are basing it on usage patterns over an extended period of time.

@MWeb: [Although this is an unofficial thread ] What would be interesting to know, however, is why/how downloading constantly WITHOUT bypassing the shapers appears to result in a ban. On an uncapped, use-as-much-as-you-want account, why is it in contravention of the T&C to queue up HTTP downloads to run 24/7?

 

[Necuno]

i don't have the energy for this any more, but i would like to add this in closing

<tinfoil value="SabreWolfy is also mweb rep ?" />

 

[Icarium]

@MWeb: [Although this is an unofficial thread ] What would be interesting to know, however, is why/how downloading constantly WITHOUT bypassing the shapers appears to result in a ban. On an uncapped, use-as-much-as-you-want account, why is it in contravention of the T&C to queue up HTTP downloads to run 24/7?

Their T&C's specifically state that the account is intended for periodic use, which 24/7 downloading is not.

 

[Tanya35]

i don't have the energy for this any more, but i would like to add this in closing

<tinfoil value="SabreWolfy is also mweb rep ?" />

What can I say further ...

 

[ajules]

Their T&C's specifically state that the account is intended for periodic use, which 24/7 downloading is not.

Yep,specifically states "periodic,active use".Would love it if MWEB could quantify this for us.
I think a real bone of contention for me is the fact that as we get shaped more and more we are having to download for longer periods to still get the usage we were getting previously.
So through no fault of our own are we unwittingly becoming abusers of the T&C's by having to download for extended periods.
And for sake of clarity I am speaking as a user that does less than 200GB's a month.

 

[remybfg10k]

People don't like being lied to or promised something, pay money and not receive it. Yes they can move to another ISP but its good consumer practice that if a company does this, they are reported and the rest of the public is made aware of it.

But in the same sense i should be pissed that i bought a car that doesn't do 100km/10l as the manufacturer claimed or that it doesn't do 0 to 100km/h in exactly 14.3 seconds, if i choose to drive it faster its going to use more petrol etc

All companies promise the world, but its all down to best effort in the end.

I just think its much easier to give your one month notice and move to another ISP, i am pretty sure that MWEB might not even hold you to your month notice and terminate the person early.

I am on the uncapped/unshaped and i am happily getting exactly what i am paying for.

If you guys are unhappy, why not just move, thats the real question, talk with your wallet, if enough people do that then MWEB will take a dip in earnings and be forced to relook at everything

 

[xrapidx]

Their T&C's specifically state that the account is intended for periodic use, which 24/7 downloading is not.

It also specifically states, at their sole discretion - so they could ban you for searching for "Jelly babies" if they wanted too.

 

[Tanya35]

But in the same sense i should be pissed that i bought a car that doesn't do 100km/10l as the manufacturer claimed or that it doesn't do 0 to 100km/h in exactly 14.3 seconds, if i choose to drive it faster its going to use more petrol etc

All companies promise the world, but its all down to best effort in the end.

I just think its much easier to give your one month notice and move to another ISP, i am pretty sure that MWEB might not even hold you to your month notice and terminate the person early.

I am on the uncapped/unshaped and i am happily getting exactly what i am paying for.

If you guys are unhappy, why not just move, thats the real question, talk with your wallet, if enough people do that then MWEB will take a dip in earnings and be forced to relook at everything

Mweb promised to 'Free the Web'. Instead, they have constricted what we do by discouraging anything but browsing.
We bought into it because it was affordable. Unshaped is, and has always been, expensive.

 

[Cicero]

Jeez, I'm not with MWEB, never have been, and have no association with them either, but some of you okes are such drama queens. You ask the same questions all the time, and get the same answers from MWEB. They cannot be more clear, and you aren't going to get the answer you want. Just aint gonna happen.

 

[SabreWolfy]

Their T&C's specifically state that the account is intended for periodic use, which 24/7 downloading is not.

Ah, yes, exactly. Thanks for pointing that out -- I missed that. I was wondering which part of the T&C refers to this. Then that's fine. Bypassing the shaping contravenes the T&C; continual downloading 24/7 also contravenes the T&C. Sorted

 

[SabreWolfy]

i don't have the energy for this any more, but i would like to add this in closing

<tinfoil value="SabreWolfy is also mweb rep ?" />

 

[SSung]

Their T&C's specifically state that the account is intended for periodic use, which 24/7 downloading is not.

The period I intend to use the account is 24/7.

But in the same sense i should be pissed that i bought a car that doesn't do 100km/10l as the manufacturer claimed or that it doesn't do 0 to 100km/h in exactly 14.3 seconds, if i choose to drive it faster its going to use more petrol etc

My 'car' seems to be stuck in a swamp.

 

[Alestorm]

So MWEB, do you say use of VPN services for privacy is illegal under your TOS? Use of VPN to bypass foreign website geo-targeting is also illegal under your TOS?
If legal state how much is acceptable on the shaped 4Mbit account.

1. They specifically unshape VPN because it is "legal", very obvious.

2. The only thing illegal is using a VPN to download at full speed where you would have been shaped, i.e P2P.

It's really not an issue if you understand those two points. Just browsing for privacy isn't going to be against the TOS, doing all your downloads at full speed on it is.

So do you see why there's no amount for them to state? It's fine to use a large amount browsing on your VPN for privacy, no limit there, whereas using your VPN to do P2P/shaped downloading will be against the TOS. Quite simple, and you had an MWeb rep stay up till 2.30am in the last thread replying to your hypothetical scenarios about this!

 

[Icarium]

Mweb promised to 'Free the Web'. Instead, they have constricted what we do by discouraging anything but browsing.
We bought into it because it was affordable. Unshaped is, and has always been, expensive.

So what were these options that were available before Mwebs current offerings that made this a step backwards?

Paying R60+ a gig for unshaped bandwidth?
Paying R20+ a gig for shaped bandwidth?
Paying R999 for an uncapped account that was throttled (not shaped) half the day?
Paying R1500+ for uncapped accounts with various shaping/throttling/rolling thresholds?

The simple fact is that even with sometimes draconian shaping policies and vague AUP's, for the vast majority of people these accounts do give them the freedom to use the web as they want. They may not be free, but they're certainly more free than they were 6 months ago.

If you're in the small minority that want to grab as much as you can, all the time - there are other ISP's and products more suited to your needs.

 

[PeterCH]

1. They specifically unshape VPN because it is "legal", very obvious.

I don't know that. They unshape it because maybe online banking and shopping sites use encryption and they don't want to penalise that.

2. The only thing illegal is using a VPN to download at full speed where you would have been shaped, i.e P2P.

So it is legal to use a VPN for privacy but also illegal to use VPN for privacy. So I may not have privacy if I want to download a file over x MB/GB of size while browsing because that may be misinterpreted by MWEB as 'abusing' VPN too for downloading stuff they shape.

Now all I want and I hope your logic will agree here and find it reasonable, is a quantification of the x figure above. So if I am enjoying privacy and decide to download a 300MB file, I will have to disconnect my privacy and download that file. In other words I may not have privacy while using the internet for anything more than browsing, or perhaps there is a limit to what MWEB considers abusive in this instance. So if I have to download some files while browsing I can do so while still in VPN mode. I want to know the limit because the double think here is terrible.

It's really not an issue if you understand those two points. Just browsing for privacy isn't going to be against the TOS, doing all your downloads at full speed on it is.

The two points contradict each other because they are explained in too vague a way.

If I am in VPN mode and browse for 90% of the time, is it ok to download files which I may browse out for 10% of the time too? Or perhaps the % is a megabyte indicator. If I do 10MB of browsing, how much of that can be continous so that I may see if my browsing/downloading behaviour is able to co-exist with privacy or not on this MWEB product.

So do you see why there's no amount for them to state? It's fine to use a large amount browsing on your VPN for privacy, no limit there, whereas using your VPN to do P2P/shaped downloading will be against the TOS. Quite simple, and you had an MWeb rep stay up till 2.30am in the last thread replying to your hypothetical scenarios about this!

A reasonable person would see that this is too vague especially as you risk a 'ban'.

I'll put it another way. If I do 1-2GB traffic per day while shaped - is it ok to do 1-2GB of traffic per day while in VPN mode? If it's not, it is obvious that there are serious restrictions on privacy usage.

 

[cpu.]

But in the same sense i should be pissed that i bought a car that doesn't do 100km/10l as the manufacturer claimed or that it doesn't do 0 to 100km/h in exactly 14.3 seconds, if i choose to drive it faster its going to use more petrol etc

What does cars have to do with internet. Analogies...whoever came up with it

<tinfoil value="SabreWolfy is also mweb rep ?" />

...

 

[MWEBHelp]

@MWeb: [Although this is an unofficial thread ] What would be interesting to know, however, is why/how downloading constantly WITHOUT bypassing the shapers appears to result in a ban. On an uncapped, use-as-much-as-you-want account, why is it in contravention of the T&C to queue up HTTP downloads to run 24/7?

Hi Sabrewolfy

Obviously there is some trigger behavior involved that caused us to examine someone’s usage more closely and to react to it, which I think is the point everyone keeps coming back to. This is ground I have covered previously however let's go over it again.

We looked at user behavior, with the initial trigger being long periods of high speed downloading. Bear in mind that this is already in contravention of the AUP. We then looked at other factors such as the bypassing of shaping rules and the pattern of behavior over an extended period of time.

Based on this we used our discretion, rather than the application of a fixed rule which has no flexibility, to determine what course of action was appropriate to follow with each customer involved.

In the case of customers where shaping bypassing was clearly involved, we did not offer them any choice other than to move onto the appropriate product, or to cancel their service.
In certain other cases we used our discretion in offering the customer the choice to remain on the same product and bring their usage patterns more in line with those of the average user.

We have given the assurance on more than one occasion that only a small group of customers were affected in this initial exercise. Let me put this another way:

Every customer affected by this exercise was making a concerted effort to max out their line utilization on a constant and ongoing basis. There has been a lot of discussion involving all you can eat analogies so let me continue the theme by stating quite simply that if this type of ‘binge’ downloading is your sole purpose for having an Internet connection then you need to be on the Internet Addict product. I really can’t put it more plainly than this.

In closing let me state again that we have listened to all of your concerns here and that a lot of them will be taken very seriously in terms of how we take this process forward, particularly in the area of how we notify customers who are in contravention of the policy.

Kind Regards
MWEB Operations (Tech Manager)

 

[Iorek]

Thanks MWEB Operations, that puts me at ease