My Iburst Experience

M

mlpotgieter

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I signed an Iburst 3Gig package on contract about 8 months ago. This was for my company and was the second Iburst package we had. Me and my partner use Iburst for our home connection. I just wanted to let everyone know about my experiences with Iburst. First let me mention the good points just so that this post can be objective.
  • When I initially signed the contract it was processed very effectively and the Iburst modem was delivered within 2-3 days. I was pretty impressed.
  • When my Iburst is working, the speeds are great. I don't do any gaming but I do the occasional download and watch webinars and use a VPN without any problems.
  • At one point Iburst sent a technician to my home. The technician was on time and seemed professional.

Unfortunately that's where the good points stop. Here are some of the problems I had an how they were dealt with.
  1. My Iburst is connected via a firewall. The firewall keeps the connection open 24/7. Iburst have no means to update accounting data unless you disconnect and reconnect. This means that accounting data is severally skewed if one stays connected over an end of month period. This caused several months of inaccurate accounting and hassles for me. Iburst must be aware of this but only hinted towards this being the cause of the problem 2 months into the investigation.
  2. I sometimes require full un-filtered access to the Internet. Iburst block access to certain ports by default. When I asked for my connection to be unfiltered they gave me a static IP and charged me almost R200 rand extra per month. I disputed the charge and they said that the only way for them to give unfiltered access was to give me a static IP address. I told them that I did not request a static IP and only wanted unfiltered access and that the fact that their systems can not allow unfiltered access on dynamic IPs was not my problem. They stood their ground and referred me to their "retentions" department. That was over a month ago.. and I have yet to receive a call from the "retentions" department.
  3. Out of all the dozens of calls and emails I have sent to them, they rarely respond. I constantly had to send multiple emails and phone multiple times. At times I had a helpdesk ticket open for literally months, in fact I still have a ticket open now that was opened in May.
  4. For the last couple of days my Iburst connection has been extremely slow. I have just done some tests and it seems as though my connection is now throttled. All my downloads max out at 3.5Kb/s. I assume this is related to the static IP issue which was never resolved.

Above are the facts, now for my opinion. I never thought I would say any thing good about Telkom but I think that Telkom offer better service than Iburst. I can honestly say that in my thirty + years of existence, I have never come across a company with such atrocious customer service.
I also believe that Iburst's bandwidth accounting system is plastered together with sticky tape.

Today I received an sms from Iburst that pushed me over the edge... "Some Time has passed since you joined Iburst. We would like to know how you are doing. Reply CALL ME and we will call you back. The Iburst Team."
Needless to say I replied and have yet to receive the call back!!!

So to sum

DO NOT EVEN CONSIDER TAKING OUT A CONTRACT WITH IBURST IF YOU REQUIRE ANY SORT OF CUSTOMER SERVICE FROM YOUR ISP.
 
Hi MlPotgieter

Please get your contact detail through to me. I would like a chat.


Thanks
 
Agreed, iBursts customer service s the worst I have EVER had to deal with in my life, the employees on the other end of the phone seem so idiotic it makes me wonder how if they are qualified or are just cheap labour for iBurst xD

But seriously, just cancel your iBurst connection and go with ADSL, www.axxess.co.za and www.openweb.co.za and www.webafrica.co.za have some good deals, far better than anything iBurst has or for that matter will ever have.

Thats what I'm going to do in a few short months, hopefully by Jan 2010.

I could understand ifiBurst was cheaper but currently we do not get our mones worth... if it was R20 instead of R449 for 3GB then that would be acceptable, thats all their services are worth in the end.... R20.
 
Hi guys.

As a attempt to identify issues please could you email me your address, username, contact detail, speedtest.net results to JHB/CPT and New York. Please include the iBurst speed test.

This will assist me greatly in identifying the issue.

Thanks for the help.
 
Hi Shaun, I sent you my contact details and I saw a missed call on my phone yesterday so assumed you tried to contact me. I tested my speed again last night and the throughput was much better... I was downloading at 600-800 kbits/s. I assume you got the network guys to change something.
I still have not received my latest invoice so am not sure if I am being credited for the charges that I did not authorize, so we will see what happens there.

I sure hope they are paying you a truck load of money at Iburst because you seem to be the only person in the company that knows what "customer service" means.
 
I have to say, I am pretty happy with their service so far. Only been a customer for a week... ;) But all my mails was responded to in a timely fashion.
 
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