OpenWeb ADSL Feedback Thread (Pt2)

Aquadyne said:
I just sent in my cancellation, I was hesitant to be honest.

I've had some great experiences with Openweb through the years.

The daytime lack of usability has clinched it though.

I hope they can correct this issue, then I will revisit.

Just had to make sure that I sent my cancellation in before the 25th.

I've upgraded to VDSL and will be trying out Telkom for now.

Sad to go though.
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What speed you on? I really cannot afford uncapped at VDSL speeds anymore, going to go capped. I really hope we can see some more affordable 20/40Mbps pricing soon.
 
Openweb 4096k Gold Original at R 738 odd per month - how is that service rated or throttled? - or affected during this time?
 
Had super slow nntp for like a day too but it quickly recovered.

...and now I'm out of HDD space.
 
DrJohnZoidberg said:
Eish, 24 month contract!

Why don't you just get a 50GB capped bundle with AH, only R500pm and no contract. I did that with the 40Mbit option, now I just need to get a capped IS account to complement it.
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I am running blind right now, but figured that I can get the 25% monthly discount if I commit. Bundled with a 32" Smart TV & Playstation 3, line rental etc. makes it look less daunting.

According to Telkom u can also use a standard ADSL account with the VDSL line. So I'm thinking of having an uncapped ADSL account in conjunction with this deal.

My average monthly usage is around 500Gb - 650Gb

My upgrade is still not complete, so I haven't made a final commitment yet.

Not many people on VDSL to get advice from. You were my go to and now you are downgrading.

Have you tried a normal uncapped ADSL account with your VDSL? Curious.
 
whatwhat said:
Any ADSL accounts works on a VDSL sync.
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Got it, but is the performance regarding latency & jitter much better? Eg, what will my real world experience be by using a 4M Uncapped account? Significantly better or just marginally?

I'm thinking of using a capped VDSL account for gaming & streaming and then switching to ADSL uncapped for general downloading. Or just using the 2 accounts in bridged mode.
 
I have sent in my cancellation after having been with OW for a year. Same issue since late last year, daytime browsing is a no-go. I probably shouldn't have asked for the ability to self-change my password earlier today. Now I'm sitting at 50-60% speed, and I suppose this is better if you compare it to the 40% from 17:00, but not if you compare it to the normal 93% speed. Nevertheless, I have had a good laugh seeing the broken record response from cableguy.

If I may pose a question due to all the account changes, and constant addition and removal of limited account types:
How do I know (i.e. to regard as true beyond doubt) that the account type I bought is actually the account type I currently have?

My past account names:
gsch144
jps2
ow1240
daviddevernon (no.. not me)
c981
ow1318
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eegee said:
If I may pose a question due to all the account changes, and constant addition and removal of limited account types:
How do I know (i.e. to regard as true beyond doubt) that the account type I bought is actually the account type I currently have?
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This is really something I think OpenWeb needs to address, because I've wondered the exact same thing in the past. Especially for someone like me who has no access to the OpenWeb customer control panel, there is absolutely no way to be sure whether I've actually been assigned the account I'm paying for. OpenWeb can very easily assign me a Standard Uncapped account and I would be none the wiser. I would probably notice restrictive shaping, but I would have no way of knowing whether it's normal or not.

As it stands, there isn't enough transparency about what the difference between the account types on the website is. Just saying you get a higher priority on the network than other accounts really doesn't cut it unless you have some concrete data for users to understand just how much higher the priority is. Is it 1%, 20%, 50%?
 
Zewp said:
This is really something I think OpenWeb needs to address, because I've wondered the exact same thing in the past. Especially for someone like me who has no access to the OpenWeb customer control panel, there is absolutely no way to be sure whether I've actually been assigned the account I'm paying for. OpenWeb can very easily assign me a Standard Uncapped account and I would be none the wiser. I would probably notice restrictive shaping, but I would have no way of knowing whether it's normal or not.

As it stands, there isn't enough transparency about what the difference between the account types on the website is. Just saying you get a higher priority on the network than other accounts really doesn't cut it unless you have some concrete data for users to understand just how much higher the priority is. Is it 1%, 20%, 50%?
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We've proven time and time again there is little to no difference with these accounts. We even regularly have cases where people on the cheapest package have no problems, and people on Gold have problems (we believe these are the lucky ones who've been given 'nice' accounts*). There is no consistency. The reasons given are the usual shaping when the network is busy (which is not true as we've proven it is time based), downloading causing shaping, different regional load, bla bla. No consistency. These reasons are all designed to be able to escape any blame for the very real daytime slowdown everyone complains about.

All the 'home' accounts are subject to the daytime [-]shaping[/-] throttling and it seems the difference comes in where Gold is unshaped at 17h00, with cheaper accounts becoming unshaped later in the evening, 18h00, 19h00, etc. Gold offers no daytime improvement. It's simply false advertising, and a waste of money to pay for being unshaped an hour earlier than others. Oh, and the less-that-Gold accounts also often become unshaped at 17h00. But it seems this is becoming less the norm as more questions are being asked, and OpenWeb scuffle to show that the accounts are different by being more strict with shaping after hours.

And then the whole account sharing fact comes into play. Combine the whole 'downloads causing shaped browsing' explanation (if you believe it). Then you have Johnny 1,000km away from you in another province using the same account as you, and who knows what effect he's having on your browsing?

*A little background from my own personal case, I started out mid last year with a trial Gold account which performed amazingly well, almost too good to be true. I couldn't help signing up after the experience. Immediately, I couldn't do anything I was doing on the trial account, especially Twitch streaming during and after hours. I then got moved to another account (the @mynetwork 'MTN' ones) which was even worse. I got moved to another account. This account stopped authenticating** literally 1 - 2 days after it was given to me. I PMed MrBEEP to look into it - he said he tested it and could connect perfectly on his end. I then PMed 3 forumites to test for me, and none of them could connect. I proved that I was given a lie, and made a stink about it. I was then given a new (4th now) account, and this never skipped a beat much, even daytime performance was respectable.

**The authentication issue is another one that has not been touched on recently, but has been a huge thing in the recent past. Where accounts suddenly stop authenticating. No, passwords simply aren't changed and accounts brought back to life, a new account is given. Why is this? Seems to tie in with the whole account sharing thing, concurrent sessions being used up, other people sharing your account asking for password changes, etc. Another issue that is never ever answered on and swept under the carpet, as we have come to know.
 
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Goodmorning Zewp,

Kindly email [email protected] so that we can create your profile on the CP.

The CP shows the product type you are using.

Zewp said:
This is really something I think OpenWeb needs to address, because I've wondered the exact same thing in the past. Especially for someone like me who has no access to the OpenWeb customer control panel, there is absolutely no way to be sure whether I've actually been assigned the account I'm paying for. OpenWeb can very easily assign me a Standard Uncapped account and I would be none the wiser. I would probably notice restrictive shaping, but I would have no way of knowing whether it's normal or not.

As it stands, there isn't enough transparency about what the difference between the account types on the website is. Just saying you get a higher priority on the network than other accounts really doesn't cut it unless you have some concrete data for users to understand just how much higher the priority is. Is it 1%, 20%, 50%?
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Morning OpenWebbers,

We are trialing a new product profile.

If you have a Gold Uncapped (Original) account, and would like to take part in the trial, please mail [email protected] quoting this message.

The closing date for applications is Wednesday 30 April 2014.

Details:

* We have created an unshaped profile with the possible intention of converting all Gold Uncapped (Original) clients to this profile. This means no shaping 24 / 7, if the trial is a success.

We look forward to hearing from you.
 
cableguy said:
Morning OpenWebbers,

We are trialing a new product profile.

If you have a Gold Uncapped (Original) account, and would like to take part in the trial, please mail [email protected] quoting this message.

The closing date for applications is Wednesday 30 April 2014.

Details:

* We have created an unshaped profile with the possible intention of converting all Gold Uncapped (Original) clients to this profile. This means no shaping 24 / 7, if the trial is a success.

We look forward to hearing from you.
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Well done OpenWeb.

I think it's safe to say that almost all of the OpenWeb users having a hissyfit about the dynamic shaping policy (myself included) are mybb users. Most other users, away from mybb, are probably unaware of this ongoing debacle.

Most of us here are original gold members and, whilst I don't agree (at all) with the way these issues have been handled, I still commend your effort to at least do something like this to satisfy your unhappy customers. It's sad that a huge uproar had to occur before something like this could happen.

I, for one, have already given my cancellation notice. Mostly because the service is virtually unusable during the day, but partly because of the lack of customer support received. Whilst your offer (if it is really unshaped) does a lot to rectify the problems regarding your service, it does nothing to to address the issues relating to support. If OpenWeb is looking to improve the latter, then I think a good place to start would be by adequately addressing the issues on this forum.

A lot of us have drawn our own conclusions based on the little information we have at our disposal. The problem is that we have been forced to draw our own conclusions due to your silence on the issues. If OpenWeb is not guilty of these claims, then there should be no problem in dismissing them. You mentioned that OpenWeb has graphs showing network traffic which could prove that the shaping has, in fact, been dynamic. Would it be possible to supply one of these graphs? Please understand that, from our point of view, the silence is nothing short of suspicious.
 
cableguy said:
Morning OpenWebbers,

We are trialing a new product profile.

If you have a Gold Uncapped (Original) account, and would like to take part in the trial, please mail [email protected] quoting this message.

The closing date for applications is Wednesday 30 April 2014.

Details:

* We have created an unshaped profile with the possible intention of converting all Gold Uncapped (Original) clients to this profile. This means no shaping 24 / 7, if the trial is a success.

We look forward to hearing from you.
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This sounds exactly like how the the trial and 'nice' accounts mentioned above perform.

While you're at it, I would strongly motivate doing away with all other flavours of 'Gold' accounts - because they simply are not what they claim. There should be one Gold only, and that is the equivalent of a Business account from other ISPs.

Keep it simple and be honest, there is really no need to have so many different account types. Please stop with the marketing jargon to lure people in.

And please answer my question:

cableguy said:
As we manage our own capacity, we choose the amount of concurrent connections allowed on our accounts
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PostmanPot said:
Ah! So accounts are shared.

Please go on, two people using one account at the same time... Do they both get full speed?
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PostmanPot said:
This sounds exactly like how the the trial and 'nice' accounts mentioned above perform.

While you're at it, I would strongly motivate doing away with all other flavours of 'Gold' accounts - because they simply are not what they claim. There should be one Gold only, and that is the equivalent of a Business account from other ISPs.

Keep it simple and be honest, there is really no need to have so many different account types. Please stop with the marketing jargon to lure people in.

And please answer my question:
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Agreed.

Original Gold, new Gold, Leon Gold, special Gold. WTF???
 
PostmanPot said:
This sounds exactly like how the the trial and 'nice' accounts mentioned above perform.

While you're at it, I would strongly motivate doing away with all other flavours of 'Gold' accounts - because they simply are not what they claim. There should be one Gold only, and that is the equivalent of a Business account from other ISPs.

Keep it simple and be honest, there is really no need to have so many different account types. Please stop with the marketing jargon to lure people in.

And please answer my question:
Click to expand...

They-ignore-you..jpg
 
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