Poor service has to stop

[SarelvdWalt]

For a long time, I felt that this forum is useless. People who know a bit more about technology than ordinary people out there uses this, and it's pretty much just bitching and moaning without anybody really seeing it (except the ghost posters in WBS perhaps). So I took it the next level, I went & posted my comments about the poor service (slightly dumbed down for the IT illiterate) at HelloPeter.com. Check it out: http://www.hellopeter.com/details.asp?id=43011

May I ask, that if you post something there, try & keep it professional, as some of the non-IT people can take offence quite easily.

I do, however, feel that this could possibly get iBurst's attention.

 

[slimothy]

i hope it does get thier attention but if i recall there was a bunch of hellopeter complaints in april and june and wbs never responded and they were listed as the 3rd worst in the list of responders

 

[RVFmal]

I posted on the 16th ( http://www.hellopeter.com/details.asp?id=42168 ). I see thathere are quite a few posts about iBurst now, but they have yet to appear on the "Companies that respond/don't respond" list from what I have seen.

I am also still waiting for contact from HP as to whether they received a response or not from WBS. In actual fact I received a response from Shaun Green, Sasan Parvin and Thami to sort out my problem, no doubt because of my rather harshly worded e-mail that was sent to them all.

Maybe we should direct WBS' attention to the fact that there are a number of complaints on HP

 

[SarelvdWalt]

Are our hands tied then?

Think about it, we don't get help from iBurst, we can't get them to respond to HelloPeter complaints, are our hands tied? Is it possible to sue somebody for poor service? How do you define poor service in terms of internet connection.

 

[RVFmal]

Have you tried contacting Sasan, Shaun or any of the other managers? Their numbers are listed.

 

[SarelvdWalt]

Yes, Contacted, can't remember name

Yeah, someone by the name of (I think) Tsepo or something of the sorts spoke to me and promised to send out a technitian, but it never happened. It's as if they're just trying to hold a carrot in front of the donkey (me) so that I'll shut up & piss off 'till next week.

 

[fishfly]

I found the best way is to actually take that drive down to their Offices and speak to the guys personally.

I think they have a policy not to speak to anyone in a forum of any sort...

So best bet is to approach them directly.

That way you'll be sure they can't bull**** you to your face

 

[kingrob]

I STILL can't understand why iBurst follows in Telkoms footsteps when it comes to service delivery - that is the 'us & them' issue.

iBurst is a good product, and when it works, it works extremely well. I would be proud to be working on their helpdesk, because I believe in the product. For some reason they think bad service brings in more customers and try their best to give the worst service possible.

The sad thing is that I can see how WBS can improve their service & get more customers (I've got SO many ideas what to do) - why can't their highly paid managers not see it?

And I don't consider myself the sharpest tool in the shed....

 

[SarelvdWalt]

Interestingly enough, I did a brief test, to see if we're not just bitching 'bout nothing. I contacted iBurst Australia, and asked them to send me a few independent ping results. Now, granted that if they wanted to, they could give me the best they could find, and edited it a bit. So let's say they did, then it surely - if one looked at what we're getting here - looked something like "jumping between 100 and 3000 ms. Well, here's an extract of the email:

64 bytes from 202.42.120.16: icmp_seq=1 ttl=252 time=107.8 ms
64 bytes from 202.42.120.16: icmp_seq=2 ttl=252 time=107.5 ms
64 bytes from 202.42.120.16: icmp_seq=3 ttl=252 time=107.7 ms
64 bytes from 202.42.120.16: icmp_seq=4 ttl=252 time=107.6 ms
64 bytes from 202.42.120.16: icmp_seq=5 ttl=252 time=108.2 ms
64 bytes from 202.42.120.16: icmp_seq=6 ttl=252 time=107.3 ms
64 bytes from 202.42.120.16: icmp_seq=7 ttl=252 time=108.7 ms
64 bytes from 202.42.120.16: icmp_seq=8 ttl=252 time=108.3 ms
64 bytes from 202.42.120.16: icmp_seq=9 ttl=252 time=108.8 ms
64 bytes from 202.42.120.16: icmp_seq=10 ttl=252 time=108.2 ms
64 bytes from 202.42.120.16: icmp_seq=11 ttl=252 time=107.4 ms
64 bytes from 202.42.120.16: icmp_seq=12 ttl=252 time=107.8 ms
64 bytes from 202.42.120.16: icmp_seq=13 ttl=252 time=107.6 ms
64 bytes from 202.42.120.16: icmp_seq=14 ttl=252 time=134.4 ms
64 bytes from 202.42.120.16: icmp_seq=15 ttl=252 time=107.3 ms
64 bytes from 202.42.120.16: icmp_seq=16 ttl=252 time=134.4 ms
64 bytes from 202.42.120.16: icmp_seq=17 ttl=252 time=133.4 ms
64 bytes from 202.42.120.16: icmp_seq=18 ttl=252 time=107.5 ms
64 bytes from 202.42.120.16: icmp_seq=19 ttl=252 time=108.2 ms
64 bytes from 202.42.120.16: icmp_seq=20 ttl=252 time=133.2 ms
64 bytes from 202.42.120.16: icmp_seq=21 ttl=252 time=134.6 ms
64 bytes from 202.42.120.16: icmp_seq=22 ttl=252 time=133.6 ms
64 bytes from 202.42.120.16: icmp_seq=23 ttl=252 time=107.7 ms

Now, why can somebody in Australia get this done, but it can't be done in SA? So, question 1 answered: No, we're not just bitching 'bout nothing, and answer to "kingrob"'s comment: yes, with stable pings like that (how slow it ever is) one have to believe in the technology. So that means there's first of all no reason why our pings should range between 100 and 3000 ms and second of all, there's absolutely no reason why their service should be so bad, because I got a response from the guys in Aus in 24 hours - over the weekend, I might add.

I'm strongly thinking 'bout going Telkom HomeDSL192 and getting IS or Webafrica as my service provider. One thing that I've learnt from my experience, is that you are looking for **** if you make your technology provider and your ISP the same company, 'cause if you crap on them they won't crap on themselves. If, for instance, I crap on IS about *** speeds, they can crap on Telkom (and they've got much more money and power than me ).

 

[SarelvdWalt]

Oh, sorry... and here's their best ping in Aus:

64 bytes from 203.50.5.178: icmp_seq=0 ttl=59 time=13.6 ms
64 bytes from 203.50.5.178: icmp_seq=1 ttl=59 time=13.7 ms
64 bytes from 203.50.5.178: icmp_seq=2 ttl=59 time=13.7 ms
64 bytes from 203.50.5.178: icmp_seq=3 ttl=59 time=13.6 ms
64 bytes from 203.50.5.178: icmp_seq=4 ttl=59 time=13.9 ms
64 bytes from 203.50.5.178: icmp_seq=5 ttl=59 time=13.6 ms
64 bytes from 203.50.5.178: icmp_seq=6 ttl=59 time=13.6 ms
64 bytes from 203.50.5.178: icmp_seq=7 ttl=59 time=13.6 ms

And not ONE of these pings that they sent me timed out. Each having about 150 pings in them.