Plugg Uncapped ADSL Feedback

[techead]

@Janitor, you have PM

If you could please look at it ASAP I would appreciate it.

I would prefer to keep it private

 

[wingnut771]

I've changed my temp gauge network load suggestion to a 1 - 5 star dial.

for example:

The dial is on 1 star, so if you download now, you will land up on 1 star if you carry on.

 

[wingnut771]

Hi Janitor

I lost my card the other day and am collecting my new one tomorrow.

My problem is that this months payment didn't get debited, and I can't update my billing details on your site.

What should I do?

 

[biometrics]

Janitor, also can't update our credit card on your site. Emailed but have had no reply all day.

 

[janitor@plugg]

I lost my card the other day and am collecting my new one tomorrow.
My problem is that this months payment didn't get debited, and I can't update my billing details on your site.
What should I do?

You should most likely need to do a manual payment. If you PM me your plugg username, I will speak to the accounts lady tomorrow to make her aware of it so that you are not cutoff for non-payment.

Janitor, also can't update our credit card on your site. Emailed but have had no reply all day.

Unfortunately, updating expired credit card details or just simply adding new credit card details isn't currently possible (although this is possible for debit order details).

For credit card details, you need to specifically add the new details when paying/checking out an invoice, or purchasing a new service.

The reason for this is due to the nature of the Credit Card environment. We aren't allowed by law to store a credit card's CVV number, mainly for security reasons. Our credit card gateway (iVeri) requires that we present the CVV number for a credit card for it's first transaction. Subsequent transactions (the user's next recurring invoice for example which gets created at the
regular month end billing run, or extra purchases), can be billed without providing the CVV details.

It is therefor required that you create new billing details either when you pay for an existing unpaid invoice, or when purchasing an additional service. This means that you will have to wait until the 1st of next month when the new invoice has been created in order to add the new details.

Alternatively, we can generate the next invoice for a service that we would have created at billing run time at the end of the month today (manually), thereby allowing you to checkout & create the new credit card details - but it would obviously require that the invoice also be paid when this is done.

So, I would suggest that you also PM me your user details, let me speak to the accounts lady in the morning and respond back to you privately as what she suggests to make sure your service continues.

 

[janitor@plugg]

Emailed but have had no reply all day.

Oh and could you please PM me your ticket number you received back so that I can go throw my wrench at support management.

-- janitor@plugg

 

[wingnut771]

Hi Janitor

I lost my card the other day and am collecting my new one tomorrow.

My problem is that this months payment didn't get debited, and I can't update my billing details on your site.

What should I do?

Nevermind, I went back and actually read the page and clicked on the mastercard sign, entering in new details now.

Sorry Plugg

 

[techead]

Hi everyone

I'd like to post the below so everyone can read, and make sure (based on your feedback) that I am not smoking my socks here.

For some context, Im basically not happy that my star rating was dropped from 4 to 3. My usage pattern is consistent (avg 113GB/month over last 3 months, 4mb uncapped, 8mb sync). I dont download during the day, during the week. Only late at night, and on the weekend. I do download some series, Steam games and stream Netflix in a lot of the evenings. Often it streams at 720HD and I reckon this accounts for most of my bandwidth.

I requested what date/time my star rating was lowered. It was on a Sunday 22/09 at about 10am. Which in itself I have an issue with.

@Janitor, Im not posting to start an argument. Im merely trying to gather more info from other people here, as I dont think you understand where I am coming from ie. we making no progress

Hi

Thanks for the info. I have done some digging, and something isnt adding up here.

Why did your system drop my star rating on a Sunday? Sunday was the 22nd, which is off-peak. We did some downloads on the 21st as well, but that should also be classified as a off-peak. In theory 21st and 22nd should not be taken into account as you said those are off-peak.

That forced me to look at preceding days. 16th to the 20th our total traffic was 7.82GB. Thats 1.5GB/day.

What is going on here?

Regards,
Techead

Saturday and Sunday we downloaded a lot (5.1GB and 7.5GB respectively), but its classified as off-peak and should not go against my record and contribute towards dropping a star. Or am I wrong?

16th to the 20th total traffic was 7.82GB, so I cant see how that contributed in any way to my issue. Which leaves me with the above question....

thanks to all for thoughts and opinions

 

[janitor@plugg]

Howdy,

@Janitor, Im not going public coz Im trying to start a fight.

All good It is important to me that we all are on the same page and correct expectations set.

Im merely trying to gather more info from other people here, as I dont think you understand where I am coming from ie. we making no progress

That is fine. We can go over this as many times as you like, just do not expect me to draw pictures ;-) I am a Janitor by trade and my drawings suck!

To recap; I've explained to you that depending on the demand on the network, it could be that you pull more data than previous months. The demand is dynamic and changes all of the time. Nothing constant about it. One minute to the next. This past month been quite brutal in terms of demand on the network, and that is why you would find you shaping are slightly more intense than before (hence why you are currently downloading less).

You then wanted to know when your star rating dropped, since you wanted to try and see how you can avoid this from happening again, sharing the account with your dad. I happily supplied that information, and it turns out that your rating dropped on Sunday morning according to the logs. You then linked it back to various downloads you made over the weekend.

You also thought that weekends are classified as off-peak and that usage would not count towards your star rating. And you right in one sense, we classify weekends as off-peak but only when it comes to shaping of accounts.

Saturday and Sunday we downloaded a lot, but its classified as off-peak and should not go against my record and contribute towards dropping a star. Or am I wrong?

and I responded (via PM)

I think you misunderstood this posting of mine on the Plugg Uncapped thread - The times mentioned in the posting refers to when we are shaping accounts since that was the question posed to me by the forum member.

So depending on your star rating, the demand on the network etc different levels of shaping takes place during the day/night.

I do not believe I said in any posting of mine that downloading over the weekend would exclude the usage; I do recall maintaining that if you schedule all your downloads between 23:00 and 06:00, your star rating would never drop.

I am sure Mr WingNut771 tested this theory out himself by going down to a single star and up again to 4/5 by resuming his downloads at 00:00 - 06:00. Am also more than happy to continue chatting to you, but this is my feedback to our current conversation.

Please let me know if I have missed your question/point..

In the meanwhile, you need to excuse me. The electric fence on the South-East side of the Campus seems to be acting up. I need to attend to that quickly and then also check up on the installation of the additional Owl Houses.

-- janitor@plugg

 

[wingnut771]

Hi everyone

I'd like to post the below so everyone can read, and make sure (based on your feedback) that I am not smoking my socks here.

For some context, Im basically not happy that my star rating was dropped from 4 to 3. My usage pattern is consistent (avg 113GB/month over last 3 months, 4mb uncapped, 8mb sync). I dont download during the day, during the week. Only late at night, and on the weekend. I do download some series, Steam games and stream Netflix in a lot of the evenings. Often it streams at 720HD and I reckon this accounts for most of my bandwidth.

I requested what date/time my star rating was lowered. It was on a Sunday 22/09 at about 10am. Which in itself I have an issue with.

@Janitor, Im not posting to start an argument. Im merely trying to gather more info from other people here, as I dont think you understand where I am coming from ie. we making no progress



Saturday and Sunday we downloaded a lot (5.1GB and 7.5GB respectively), but its classified as off-peak and should not go against my record and contribute towards dropping a star. Or am I wrong?

16th to the 20th total traffic was 7.82GB, so I cant see how that contributed in any way to my issue. Which leaves me with the above question....

thanks to all for thoughts and opinions

Hi techead

Yes you are wrong regarding weekends being offpeak. Yes, we are blessed with unshapedness all weekend long but this comes at a cost.

I will give you an example:

A while back I had a load of stuff to catch up on and decided to download during the day sat and sun over two consecutive weekends. Weekend one resulted in my star rating dropping from 4 to 2 stars. Normal activity resumed during the week which had me on 4 stars didn't make a diff to the 2 star status as come the next sat, still being on 2 stars, I carried on over the weekend dropping me to 1 star.

I have since got back to 4 stars only recently to drop to 3 because I had a very slow torrent that was averaging less than 50kB that I decided to leave going after the 12-6am segment. This caused my rating to drop.

So, yes this star rating is truelly dynamic and gets affected differently at different times.

This is why I'm pleading for some kind of indication of the network in real time, ie: star rating gauge where if the network is maxing out then the needle will be on 11 next to the 1 star and if its quiet, then the needle will be on 1 next to the 5 star.

Hope this helps

 

[Nimz]

I do not believe I said in any posting of mine that downloading over the weekend would exclude the usage; I do recall maintaining that if you schedule all your downloads between 23:00 and 06:00, your star rating would never drop.

-- janitor@plugg

Janitor you may have thought that i was just arguing for no reason but,

This is exactly the info I wanted because most of my downloads happen at night and on weekends therefore I couldn't understand why my star rating dropped.

This however clears it up.

 

[techead]

This whole time I have been under the impression that IF weekend = "off peak" THEN =/= FLAGGED

I got this from the below (quoted)

06:00 - 18:00 - Business hours
18:00 - 23:00 - After hours
23:00 - 06:00 - Off peak
weekends - Off peak

If you schedule the majority of your downloads during Off Peak, you will never be flagged

source

So based on the above, I should not be flagged if I download on the weekend. But I have, which means that weekend DOES NOT = off peak.

I just need confirmation on this, and then I guess its resolved.

 

[Nimz]

06:00 - 18:00 - Business hours
18:00 - 23:00 - After hours
23:00 - 06:00 - Off peak
weekends - Off peak

I also thought it worked like this

 

[techead]

I also thought it worked like this

gents, clearly its not... I await confirmation

either you can be flagged for off-peak usage or you cannot. Everything points to the fact that you CAN be flagged for usage over the weekend but cannot for weekly 23h00 - 06h00

Confusion abounds

 

[techead]

snip

thanks for this info

 

[wingnut771]

This whole time I have been under the impression that IF weekend = "off peak" THEN =/= FLAGGED

I got this from the below (quoted)





source

So based on the above, I should not be flagged if I download on the weekend. But I have, which means that weekend DOES NOT = off peak.

I just need confirmation on this, and then I guess its resolved.

I agree that this can be misleading. They should clarify the diff between "offpeak" free for all 23:00-6:00 and "offpeak" weekends.

 

[techead]

I agree that this can be misleading. They should clarify the diff between "offpeak" free for all 23:00-6:00 and "offpeak" weekends.

misleading? It's downright inaccurate It makes no difference to me if I download something in the early hours of the morning on the weekend, or during the day. I just want clear rules so I stay on the highest rating possible. When I stream Netflix (which is my highest priority) I dont want to worry about shaping etc etc because Im on a crap star level.

I think I scared Janitor away

 

[wingnut771]

misleading? It's downright inaccurate It makes no difference to me if I download something in the early hours of the morning on the weekend, or during the day. I just want clear rules so I stay on the highest rating possible. When I stream Netflix (which is my highest priority) I dont want to worry about shaping etc etc because Im on a crap star level.

I think I scared Janitor away

Yea, communication is the key

Not complaining and thank my lucky stars that the **** just works and works when I get home, unlike some other ISP

 

[janitor@plugg]

This whole time I have been under the impression that IF weekend = "off peak" THEN =/= FLAGGED

I just need confirmation on this, and then I guess its resolved.

Just keep in mind that the bits and pieces you are quoting from, are from two different questions. The one is regarding shaping and when shaping occurs, and the other about how to get the star rating up.

I will concede that the second answer could give you the wrong impression since am referring to off-peak in my response. I have edited that posting of mine to read 23:00 - 06:00 Mon-Sun on that particular question.

So, to confirm, with regards to shaping.

"All the uncapped accounts make use of a progressive priority system. In other words, if your usage is high, generally the top 20% of the users, your network priority will be dropped; this starts by dropping the priority of downloading protocols. If you remain a top user eventually all of your usage will be low priority.

As an example, if your main priority is downloading you will find that during peak-hours your downloads will "slow-down". If there are however spare network capacity, you might find your downloads even during peak-hours at normal speed.

As for peak-hours; it will "normally" line-up with business and after hours:

06:00 - 18:00 - Business hours
18:00 - 23:00 - After hours
23:00 - 06:00 - Off peak
weekends - Off peak

That "slow-down" I mentioned, that would occur during the Business hours and a lesser impact during After hours.

Off peak should always be full speed.

It is important to keep in mind the priority is applied in real time, so it is not really as much -fixed times-, but more depending on usage on the network from minute to minute.

When there are plenty of capacity available on the network you will be able to use more per month, of course the opposite is also true for when everybody starts to pull as much as possible. We do not have a hard limit set when it comes to shaping (ie after 250Gigs, now we will start shaping your connection).

See shaping as a hint system for your usage.

With regards to how to make sure you do not get capped/how to get your star rating back up.

"Internet Solutions makes use of a rolling ten day window to determine your account status based on your usage. The rolling window is always today plus usage of the previous ten days; there are no specific days. Rolling ten days.

If you do find yourself 'flagged' the quickest and easiest way to get 'unflagged' is to schedule your downloads during 23:00 - 06:00, Mon - Sun. [Edit on 02/10/2013 to avoid further confusion]

If you schedule the majority of your downloads during this time, you will never be flagged.

I think I scared Janitor away

Not likely. I am a Janitor, hear me sweep!

 

[techead]

Yea, communication is the key

Not complaining and thank my lucky stars that the **** just works and works when I get home, unlike some other ISP

yeah Im not making a fuss here man, I just need clear guidelines on how to stay in the good books.

overall Im very happy with Plugg, they are very good.