Vumatel with own router?

Twix said:
Bloody hell - they screwed me around with this then :mad:

I cancelled after one day as I didn't know that it was "compulsory" to have their own router and they "did me a favour" as they said and I had to pay R999 as that is what Vumatel will charge them

I will advise everyone I know to avoid this company :mad:
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Yeah, that is what they told me at first, so I agreed to stick with them as a result. Then I found out about the compulsory router, and tried to cancel, only to be told that I am now outside the "cooling off window". I spoke to Wayne at Home Connect, and he agreed to waive the charge even though it was then outside the cooling off period, because I had been lied to.

You may have luck contacting him too.
 
Just wanted to provide some clarification. There is no cooling off period that is offered to customers, nor is this stated anywhere in our terms. Cancellation notice is 1 month. I believe our team had agreed to credit you based on your request for us to install the account on your personal router which we wont allow. We understand that some customers have requirements that are not supported by our offering.

Thanks,





RoganDawes said:
Yeah, I ended up cancelling my service with Home Connect. For what it is worth, there is apparently a 7 day cooling off period where you can cancel your subscription, and are not liable for the R999 signup fee. (That might just be a Vumatel thing, though)
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@Twix, I will gladly chat to the team about your cancellation request. We are certainly not in the business of charging customers for services that they don't want but there is also a cost associated which the ISP has to pickup.






Twix said:
Bloody hell - they screwed me around with this then :mad:

I cancelled after one day as I didn't know that it was "compulsory" to have their own router and they "did me a favour" as they said and I had to pay R999 as that is what Vumatel will charge them

I will advise everyone I know to avoid this company :mad:
Click to expand...
 
Home-Connect Homie said:
Just wanted to provide some clarification. There is no cooling off period that is offered to customers, nor is this stated anywhere in our terms. Cancellation notice is 1 month. I believe our team had agreed to credit you based on your request for us to install the account on your personal router which we wont allow. We understand that some customers have requirements that are not supported by our offering.

Thanks,
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Tamarah Al-Halaseh in an email to me said:
Do note however , we would need to recover our costs for of activating you on the Vumatel Network , which is R999.00 . We activated you on the Vumatel Network via the CPE on the 22/09/2016. If it was less than seven days we would be able to let you go without a charge.
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Well, I guess you all need to get your stories straight, then.
 
Home-Connect Homie said:
@Twix, I will gladly chat to the team about your cancellation request. We are certainly not in the business of charging customers for services that they don't want but there is also a cost associated which the ISP has to pickup.
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I had to pay the R999 after one day (actually less then 24h).

That is not reasonable in any way or form and I was also under impression that the router is not compulsory as there is nowhere that it states that the router is an absolute must.
There are other companies as well stating "free router" but one can still use its own with no dependancy.

I emailed Tamara Al-Halaseh this morning with regards to my cancelation. How does it work that some clients pay to exit after they find out about the compulsory router and some don't?

By the way, the 7 days cool off period does not need to be in your terms and conditions as it is covered in the Consumer protection law
LINK


EDIT:
Tamarah Al-Halaseh said:
Originally Posted by Tamarah Al-Halaseh in an email to me
Do note however , we would need to recover our costs for of activating you on the Vumatel Network , which is R999.00 . We activated you on the Vumatel Network via the CPE on the 22/09/2016. If it was less than seven days we would be able to let you go without a charge.
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This is just great...I wonder how come that I had to pay after less then 24h?
 
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@Twix, as per my post I have taken your query up internally with the team and will get back to you and will revert directly to you.
 
@Rogan happy you found a provider that you happy with.

@koekGHT our cost are pretty straight forward on our website. Activation fee and monthly fee or our promotional package which has Zero Activation with a monthly fee. You would need to share with me which aspect is not clear and I will certainly address with the team
 
Home-Connect Homie said:
@Rogan happy you found a provider that you happy with.

@koekGHT our cost are pretty straight forward on our website. Activation fee and monthly fee or our promotional package which has Zero Activation with a monthly fee. You would need to share with me which aspect is not clear and I will certainly address with the team
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More the fact you HAVE to use your router.
 
koeksGHT said:
More the fact you HAVE to use your router.
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Indeed.

Since Home-Connect appears to be the only ISP that has this requirement, it makes sense that you state this in big bold letters up front, so that more people do not have to go through this rigmarole.

What is really funny for me is that Home-Connect claims that this is for "security reasons", but cannot actually explain what those reasons are, other than vague references to torrenting and nasty-grams from the media watchdogs if you are caught. Quite how having control of the router makes any difference in this case, I cannot fathom.

Edit: Yes, if you look in the master service agreement, and read it REALLY carefully, you'll find this gem:

“Service Equipment” shall mean the hardware, software, systems, cabling, and facilities provided by CipherWave at your Site in order to make the Service available to you. CipherWave remains the owner of Service Equipment.
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as well as:

upon termination of a Service, allow CipherWave access to each Customer Site to remove the Service Equipment.
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So much for a free router, eh?

And if you then look in the service terms, and again, read REALLY carefully, you'll see this:

CipherWave will retain the password for the Service Equipment. Responsibility for the IP configuration of the Service Configuration lies with CipherWave.
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So yes, it is disclosed. Just not prominently.
 
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Home-Connect Homie said:
Just wanted to provide some clarification. There is no cooling off period that is offered to customers, nor is this stated anywhere in our terms. Cancellation notice is 1 month. I believe our team had agreed to credit you based on your request for us to install the account on your personal router which we wont allow. We understand that some customers have requirements that are not supported by our offering.

Thanks,
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I strongly recommend that you familiarise yourself with The Consumer Protection Act.
 
Just signed up with home-connect. Have I made a mistake and why is this not pretty(forwarding mode)? My situation is that I am using my DGN3700 and limited to 10mps while I wait for their router. They won't tell me why I can't get 100mps with my own router.
 
As explained above, you can't use your own router because in order to get full bandwidth, you have to establish a pppoe connection. And you can't do that with your own router, because they won't give you the credentials and other settings to do so.

Personally, I found that to be customer-hostile, and chose not to support them.
 
Replaced many vuma and hoods routers with our router/firewall works 100% perfectly and supports 100Mbits no problem.
 
David said:
Replaced many vuma and hoods routers with our router/firewall works 100% perfectly and supports 100Mbits no problem.
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It's not vumatel, its home connect that is the issue
 
My suspicion is that the home connect guys don't have enough Internet breakout at teraco where the interconnect is done to the Vumatel network. So they create a tunnel to their data centre and then break you out from there.
 
TheGuy said:
My suspicion is that the home connect guys don't have enough Internet breakout at teraco where the interconnect is done to the Vumatel network. So they create a tunnel to their data centre and then break you out from there.
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The cross connect to Vumatel happens at IS Parklands actually, they more than likely do the PPPoE thing for accounting basis. And the way the Vumatel system works is actually layer 3 so it makes doing PPPoE impossible unless you run a tunnel to your network over IP and then PPPoE over that to your NAS which then plugs into accounting etc etc.

So what they could possibly do is just issue you the PPPoE details and you would then use a router which plugs into theirs and establishes the connection, that way you can change routers whenever you like. Still a bit of a workaround having so many devices.
 
I'm actually using PFSense on a Hyper-V VM, I just spoofed the MAC address of the existing router the PFSense WAN interface gets a public IP from DHCP.
 
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