fluffypony
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Jul 3, 2009
- Messages
- 214
- Reaction score
- 7
I know there are a lot of OpenWeb fans here, and I'm glad you have had a great experience. I have not been as fortunate, and as a warning to those (many or few) looking to make the switch I feel it important that this get told. OpenWeb is not all fairies and roses.
Telkom installed a new 10mbps line at my home and completed installation in the afternoon on 2013/03/09. I signed up for OpenWeb (Gold Capped) as I had read so many, many good things about them on mybroadband. Loaded the account details in, my router reconnected, and I ran a preliminary speed test. Things looked good - about 4Mbps down and 1Mbps up. I resumed a torrent that had been paused, and watched the speed pick up for a minute or two...before it promptly plummeted. DropBox and Skype went offline, and my SSH sessions to my servers timed out. Tests confirmed that I had no TCP/UDP traffic going our or coming in, and ICMP was also dead in the water. My first thought was that it was my router, so I did the sensible thing and rebooted. After successfully being able to repeat the failure I switched to my old WebAfrica unshaped prepaid account, which had no connectivity or stability issues. I sent a message to OpenWeb about this through their "contact us" page. As it was Saturday night, we went out, and the problem remained abandoned for the next day. I devoted several hours on Sunday to seeing if I could determine what the problem was, as OpenWeb had emailed/sms'd new ADSL account details (without responding to my message, mind you, but I assumed it was in an effort to assist me). I tested connectivity over a period on Telkom's guest ADSL as well as WebAfrica. Only when I connected to OpenWeb did I have the connection consistently go dead and then come back on a few minutes later (all while the line stayed physically connected and synced). Late that afternoon I emailed OpenWeb support and cc'd [email protected] to let them know the situation remained unchanged.
Over the course of the next few days OpenWeb played the "it works on our side" card, insisting that the problem must be on my side. We even went as far as to completely reset the router to factory defaults (the router is a Pace 921VNX VDSL/ADSL router). In the interim, I had reopened my old AfriHost account. I now had three ISPs working perfectly on the line (Telkom guest ADSL, WebAfrica prepaid unshaped, AfriHost ADSL+Wifi roaming), and the same connectivity issues I'd had with OpenWeb from the beginning. Traceroutes when connected via OpenWeb and WebAfrica showed traffic taking the exact same route over IS' ADSL backbone (when the OpenWeb line worked), and yet the WebAfrica connection was stable and stayed up for hours. OpenWeb's support still insisted the problem was on my side, despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary, and refused to acknowledge that there was even a remote possibility of a problem on their side. Eventually they stopped responding to emails on 2013/03/12.
As reliable Internet access is a business necessity for me, and I work from home, I could no longer wait for OpenWeb to eventually figure out that the problem was not on my side, so in the evening on 2013/03/12 I emailed [email protected] and cc'd [email protected] requesting the account be cancelled, and asking for my money to be refunded as I had not been able to ever use the account. I made sure to keep things positive, stating that I bore no ill-will against OpenWeb, and that I'd give them a spin again in the future, but right now I needed to stick with what was working. After two days of silence I sent a reply to both those addresses asking for a response by close-of-business the following day, else I would have to ask my bank to reverse the credit card transaction. That deadline has passed, and yet I have still heard nothing from OpenWeb.
I am shocked and appalled by the lack of service from such an apparently reputable company. Their inability to problem solve an issue that is clearly distinct to them is mind-boggling. Their continued insistence that it is my problem without any indication as to how to solve it is equally nonsensical. Finally, their dead silence when I kindly requested my account be cancelled and refunded is simply not acceptable. If you're looking for an ISP and you need to rely on your Internet connection (major outages or line failures notwithstanding, that's what 3G backup is for) then I cannot in good conscience recommend OpenWeb. In fact, I would recommend avoiding their horrendous service like the plague.
Telkom installed a new 10mbps line at my home and completed installation in the afternoon on 2013/03/09. I signed up for OpenWeb (Gold Capped) as I had read so many, many good things about them on mybroadband. Loaded the account details in, my router reconnected, and I ran a preliminary speed test. Things looked good - about 4Mbps down and 1Mbps up. I resumed a torrent that had been paused, and watched the speed pick up for a minute or two...before it promptly plummeted. DropBox and Skype went offline, and my SSH sessions to my servers timed out. Tests confirmed that I had no TCP/UDP traffic going our or coming in, and ICMP was also dead in the water. My first thought was that it was my router, so I did the sensible thing and rebooted. After successfully being able to repeat the failure I switched to my old WebAfrica unshaped prepaid account, which had no connectivity or stability issues. I sent a message to OpenWeb about this through their "contact us" page. As it was Saturday night, we went out, and the problem remained abandoned for the next day. I devoted several hours on Sunday to seeing if I could determine what the problem was, as OpenWeb had emailed/sms'd new ADSL account details (without responding to my message, mind you, but I assumed it was in an effort to assist me). I tested connectivity over a period on Telkom's guest ADSL as well as WebAfrica. Only when I connected to OpenWeb did I have the connection consistently go dead and then come back on a few minutes later (all while the line stayed physically connected and synced). Late that afternoon I emailed OpenWeb support and cc'd [email protected] to let them know the situation remained unchanged.
Over the course of the next few days OpenWeb played the "it works on our side" card, insisting that the problem must be on my side. We even went as far as to completely reset the router to factory defaults (the router is a Pace 921VNX VDSL/ADSL router). In the interim, I had reopened my old AfriHost account. I now had three ISPs working perfectly on the line (Telkom guest ADSL, WebAfrica prepaid unshaped, AfriHost ADSL+Wifi roaming), and the same connectivity issues I'd had with OpenWeb from the beginning. Traceroutes when connected via OpenWeb and WebAfrica showed traffic taking the exact same route over IS' ADSL backbone (when the OpenWeb line worked), and yet the WebAfrica connection was stable and stayed up for hours. OpenWeb's support still insisted the problem was on my side, despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary, and refused to acknowledge that there was even a remote possibility of a problem on their side. Eventually they stopped responding to emails on 2013/03/12.
As reliable Internet access is a business necessity for me, and I work from home, I could no longer wait for OpenWeb to eventually figure out that the problem was not on my side, so in the evening on 2013/03/12 I emailed [email protected] and cc'd [email protected] requesting the account be cancelled, and asking for my money to be refunded as I had not been able to ever use the account. I made sure to keep things positive, stating that I bore no ill-will against OpenWeb, and that I'd give them a spin again in the future, but right now I needed to stick with what was working. After two days of silence I sent a reply to both those addresses asking for a response by close-of-business the following day, else I would have to ask my bank to reverse the credit card transaction. That deadline has passed, and yet I have still heard nothing from OpenWeb.
I am shocked and appalled by the lack of service from such an apparently reputable company. Their inability to problem solve an issue that is clearly distinct to them is mind-boggling. Their continued insistence that it is my problem without any indication as to how to solve it is equally nonsensical. Finally, their dead silence when I kindly requested my account be cancelled and refunded is simply not acceptable. If you're looking for an ISP and you need to rely on your Internet connection (major outages or line failures notwithstanding, that's what 3G backup is for) then I cannot in good conscience recommend OpenWeb. In fact, I would recommend avoiding their horrendous service like the plague.
) for a while to see if their accounts perform any better. Service seems about the same so far. Let's see about having to 'reset my port' all the time to get a stable account.
