I'd actually like to add to the above post. A lot of people on this forum are IT people, who regularly recommend using ISP's. I myself have gotten 9 other people on OW over the last few years. Therefore, saying you have thousands of other customers really has no relevance here. Simply because some of those customers could have joined on recommendations by forumites.
I've been with OW for a long time but have to admit that the lack of transparency is very very disappointing and has always been. That said, there are a lot of positives as well, so it's issues that OW needs to sort out.
I very rarely have issues, but have been experiencing slow speeds for the last week. I haven't logged a support ticket as you have stated the network is very busy. I understand that, no problem. I can suffer for a week. I would however be very disappointed if the allegations regarding sharing accounts prove to be true. Because then you are effectively lying to clients.
Overall, as stated before, I am very happy with OW.
This. I am aware that people are having issues and I've shared many of the same concerns over the years (and still do some of them), but right now I'm relatively happy with my account and I'm getting great value for money for it. My current account is performing just as good as the VB accounts did back in the day.
One thing I want to touch on that I strongly agree with is the lack of transparency from OW. I've been a customer since 2011 and in all that time I have never had access to the customer control panel. Originally when I asked why this was the case back in 2011, Cableguy (then the local OW troll and likely a shill)
* bitched at me for expecting 'too much' from an account I got on special for R258 a month. I still don't have any access to the CP and I don't know why not. This is the first ISP I've encountered where my account is handled entirely through email.
That aside, I don't care too much. Back in 2012 I had a really ****ty time with my internet and was moved from one crappy account to the next until eventually I got the account I have now, which performs admirably. I've reached the point where I'm too scared to email OpenWeb for anything at all because I am terrified that they will want to give me new account details and I'd have to struggle with that all over again. At one point in 2012 I was convinced they were giving me account credentials for Standard Uncapped, because that's how poorly many of those accounts performed.
And yes, I also got many accounts with odd names not belonging to me, which I found very suspect at the time.
*To get back on this, I don't for a second believe Cableguy is a customer who got jumped up to Openweb rep randomly. The earliest time I encountered him was back in 2011, when he made a habit of trolling the OW threads and being rude and condescending to anyone who said anything remotely negative about OW, even when they were voicing legitimate concerns. Way back then people called him out on being an OW employee and I believe we were right. At one point Cableguy suddenly disappeared into the woodwork for months and then suddenly out of the blue he is promoted to OpenWeb forum rep by MrBeep?
I call shenanigans. Cableguy has always been an OpenWeb employee, but never made that officially known on the forums. He was only made an official forum rep when MrBeep needed someone to man the forums while he was away. Just have a look at his early posting history and see the kind of responses he left in OpenWeb feedback threads. In short, I do not trust Cableguy, at all. If I had to get support for my OpenWeb account, I would be too scared to entrust my account credentials to Cableguy.
(note, I'll be monitoring my account this week. Aside from the occasional hitch here and there, it's been running flawlessly the past two years. If it suddenly starts experiencing severe issues or underperforming, I'll know exactly what the reason is.)
