Web Africa ADSL general feedback

Had a chat just now to a senior member in support who I found refreshingly honest and who did not try and make excuses etc.

He agreed that capped are suffering as a result of uncapped and that this is wrong. Tomorrow more capacity should be coming online and hopefully this will help. This degradation is impacting on news server etc.

Let's hope the additional capacity tomorrow will help.

I do get the feeling (not from him at all) that maybe WA does not want us capped people or those on the special account and that this would be a way of getting rid of us. Just give us worse and worse products so like boswald, we might just say cheers and WA does not have to give these special deals. I hope this is wrong!
 
Fulton17 said:
Had a chat just now to a senior member in support who I found refreshingly honest and who did not try and make excuses etc. He agreed that capped are suffering as a result of uncapped and that this is wrong. Tomorrow more capacity should be coming online and hopefully this will help.
Click to expand...

Looking forward to tomorrow then; hopefully my experience on my capped acc will return back to normal. Good to see they admit that capped accs are affected because that means they'll look into the problem.
 
Fulton17 said:
This degradation is impacting on news server etc.
Click to expand...

Yes I can confirm this, download from Astraweb is 0%-1% of line speed... but I can stream 720p youtube easily.. eish, doesn't make sense for us poor capped users, can't get what we paid for :) Gaming seems to be fine tonight, which is a good sign, have not had a time-out yet.
 
Mmmmm. Haven't noticed - haven't really checked but I would hope capped users are in a different "pool" than uncapped...?
 
I'm experiencing a definite degradation in service on my capped account. Normally late at night any chat rooms where audio and webcams are used work very well, getting max line speed (in 2010 it was great 24/7). Since uncapped launched I've never experienced max speed on chat apps again. Right now I get 50% of the speed and the latency is erratic. Can notice it on Skype video calls too, too much buffering. A month ago it was bad during the day but at least great at night, now it's just bad 24/7.
 
Fulton17 said:
I do get the feeling (not from him at all) that maybe WA does not want us capped people or those on the special account and that this would be a way of getting rid of us. Just give us worse and worse products so like boswald, we might just say cheers and WA does not have to give these special deals. I hope this is wrong!
Click to expand...

Hmm from a business perspective your statement makes no sense. Why would any company want to alienate customers who bring in a steady profit margin every month? The uncapped accounts (by nature) would bring them varied profit margins depending on what the user does with it. The capped accounts have a set profit margin which they can count on, no variables involved, stable income.

I doubt very much that they would do this intentionally.
 
Still having time-out issues. Will test on alternative account now and give feedback.
 
MFour said:
Hmm from a business perspective your statement makes no sense. Why would any company want to alienate customers who bring in a steady profit margin every month? The uncapped accounts (by nature) would bring them varied profit margins depending on what the user does with it. The capped accounts have a set profit margin which they can count on, no variables involved, stable income.

I doubt very much that they would do this intentionally.
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Maybe I should have focused more on the special capped accounts as what you said makes total sense. I am on a my broadband special and - from what I understand of it - was a very special deal that is actually costing WA.

Just the conspiracy theorist in me, coming to the fore :)
 
Fulton17 said:
Maybe I should have focused more on the special capped accounts as what you said makes total sense. I am on a my broadband special and - from what I understand of it - was a very special deal that is actually costing WA.

Just the conspiracy theorist in me, coming to the fore :)
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lol fair enough, I have those tendencies as well :D

I am also on a RedAfrica account and loving it. Keep in mind that those accounts were part of a marketing (possibly for testing purposes) strategy. The value in those accounts to WA come in many different forms other than direct profit in order to bring in more clients, and if those clients are neglected, will have the exact opposite effect. So it is in their interest to keep us "special account" customers just as happy as all their other clients.

PS: No I don't work for WA, just a happy and loyal customer. :)
 
Thanks MFour for your comment. I am a rare local who does believe in customer service, businesses delivering what you pay for / they promise and fighting for that.

I thought let me try a news server DL; tried to DL 3 files that are only a few hours old, and my DL is "flying" at 0 kb :(

I have followed up with support, so will see what they say, but in all the time I have being using the WA news server, I have never had it this bad (unless the lines were down and a few times when something was wrong). The problem this time is that things just do not seem to be being addressed / resolved
 
Agreed, it should work as "advertised" and I would also be kicking up a fuss if it was not. I mainly use paid international news servers (gave up on local free servers some time ago), but I generally set it to DL between 12 and 7 am and have not tried it much during the day (being at work and all) so could not comment on the speeds. That said 0 kbps is certainly not as advertised, and should be remedied asap. I have faith though that WA will come to the party, if not, well then I'll have to start singing a different tune ;)
 
No response from anyone at WA and still sitting on 0 kbs.

I think all the time and energy that WA has is being given to uncapped and the rest of us are put on the back burner :(
 
Fulton17 said:
I thought let me try a news server DL; tried to DL 3 files that are only a few hours old, and my DL is "flying" at 0 kb :(

I have followed up with support, so will see what they say, but in all the time I have being using the WA news server, I have never had it this bad (unless the lines were down and a few times when something was wrong). The problem this time is that things just do not seem to be being addressed / resolved
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They're shaping the news server to death during business hours. I also cannot connect most of the time and when I do connect it's 0kB/s as well, during business hours. But after hours it is back to normal speed. I assume it is shaped to death due to a business decision so I don't think there's an actual "problem" on the news server, because the floodgates do open after hours and then it works OK.

Would be nice to download 24/7 at max speed from the news server. It was like that 1-2 yrs ago. But I guess those days are over, due to policy.
 
WAJeff said:
http://forums.webafrica.co.za/showthread.php/6833-WebAfrica-News-Server?p=56309&viewfull=1#post56309
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Jeff, what is the official policy on the news server? Do you have a business rule in place that automatically shapes/throttles the news server to death between business hours? If you do, then no troubleshooting is required since you have that policy in place anyway.
Or are we supposed to be able to download from the news server at max linespeed, regardless of time of day? What is the current traffic management policy rule that is set for the news server?
 
Globetrotter said:
Jeff, what is the official policy on the news server? Do you have a business rule in place that automatically shapes/throttles the news server to death between business hours? If you do, then no troubleshooting is required since you have that policy in place anyway.
Or are we supposed to be able to download from the news server at max linespeed, regardless of time of day? What is the current traffic management policy rule that is set for the news server?
Click to expand...

Very valid question

What I find odd is that as a capped user, it would seem that during office hours the news server and DL's are a no-no, yet for uncapped, they are free to DL. Surely as a capped user who has paid for a specific service and capacity I should have the choice of using my bandwidth how and when I please (taking into account DL+ hours). For me I do +95% of my DL's in DL+ time, but do feel that if I need to do some in office hours, I should be able to, especially if uncapped users can.

Anyway let's see what Jeff says. In addition Jeff, could you comment on my comment? Thanks
 
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