My first experience with neotel prime..(Need help!)

[digger]

Hi Everyone!
I'm new to the forum, been reading through the threads
got many helps from the fellow members.

The first impression they gave me was not one of the best.
2 weeks ago, I ordered the neotel prime and payed by credit card,
after a week, by following up everyday, they said something about our credit card payment dont match with the order, and said there is something worng with their credit card system...
ok, that reason is acceptable...then after another week(which is this week), finally and i mean FINALLY they said they going to send the device to our door the next day. On the tuesday, they phone and confirmed the address...Funny enough, as the address was confirmed (I stay in Pretoria), later I recieved a phone call from NEOTEL saying that they made a mistake and the device was sent to DURBAN...My first reaction was...how can it go to Durban if they confirmed with me on the phone...
So then the device only came the next day.

As I was very excited about this whole NEOTEL PRIME UNLIMITED story, I opened the box with joy and assembled the device and had it connected.

Joy is everwhere! Yey!

Yet...

When I opened my first website, it was the slowest I ever experience, even slower than a 56k con...
so i was waiting and waiting, nothing improved.
So i used a blackberry device to check online and saw that people are talking about speedtest on this forum, so then I did the speed test...

I'm situated on the fringe of GOOD COVERAGE on the NEOTEL COVERAGE MAP

My results (did lot of test) were as follows:

Ping: 500-999
Upload: 400-700k
Download: Below 5k
Signal Bar:2-3

I was so disappointed and don't know what to do, so I did some research on this forum...

I found people talking about using an external antenna, so yesterday, I headed to Radiant Antennas and got hold of the RAY 800/15 Antenna...

Was hopefully that there might be some improvement, so got home and tested it again...

Funny enough, the result were the same...

SO now i'm here with an antenna that is totally useless...

I phone the NEOTEL customer service, they say they don't gaurentee upload speedsmad:i wasn't very happy with that answer) shouldn't the speed be at average(60k, or even 30k is fine, but there is definately something wrong when it is 5k...)... but then, everyone who knows internet knows that there must be uploads in order to open website and so, so with a speed of 0.5k(on the speedtest it shows 5k) uploading, how am I suppose to download anything or browse any web?


another thing, the device switch from EVDO to 1X, did the speed test too

i was as follows:

Ping: 500-999
Upload:95-120k
Download: 40-65k
signal bar: 2-3

the upload is even better in the 1X mode than in the EVDO mode...

Now I'm sitting here with the device and the antenna which I have absolutely no idea what to do with it... and I'm mean, for R999/month, it cheap(compare to other companies),but it not cheap when you have to pay it and can't do nothing with it..., plus you can't really do any download with BT or P2P sharing, cos u need upload in order to do that...

So can anyone help me out? any solutions?
Please help...

My worse scenario is to cancel the contract, anyone knows what is the penalty to cancel the contract?

Thanks...

 

[nk1]

Welcome to the disaster that is Neotel.
Really sorry that you are experiencing this but the the thread about speed degradation is going on for months now - we are all in the same boat and we have been warning others to stay away.
Anyways, I may be wrong but according to most contracts in SA - you have 7 days in which to cancel without penalty - I suggest you follow up this or maybe someone else can verify.

 

[Neotel]

Hi digger,

Please PM me your Neotel service number, location at which you are using the service and day time contact please.

Thank you.

 

[axialcon]

I had the exact same problem, the device was faulty. Call Neotel and get them to replace the unit.