I-burst need to get their act together

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billy101

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I've been with I-burst for a year now and well actually I really like what they have to offer.
I signed a 3 gig contract with them in feb and uptill june everything went very well. My speed was at a relatively constant 256kb per second or so which was perfect for what I was doing.
Well from June everything went pear shaped.
Every month since june I've been billed twice, and extra R700 every month!!
I have phoned them over and over again and eventually got a refund last month for my extra debits and was promised it would not happen again, I probably spent about R1000 on phone calls for I got passed from one person to the next and no-one new what was wrong.
Well eventually I found out what my problem was.....
When I signed up, what I was looking for was to have a 3gig account but to have 2 UTD's connecting to that account and when requesting to join was told that that could easily be arranged.
Well what I later found out after about 6-7 months of trying was that you could not do that and that you got billed according to how many UTD's you had. Well that just doesn't make sense to me.....
So I've canceled my contract for well I've had enough with these incompetent people.
I've sent in a letter via registered mail and an E-mail to cancel and haven't heard from them in 3 weeks.
I've also blocked their debit orders, so they won't get a cent from me.
Do you think I have good reason to do so?
Could they sue me for doing so?

I hope no-one has to go through what I've had to go through and I wouldn't recomend them to anyone.
Rather just stick to Telkom, you can always plugin a wireless router if you want portability.

It would be nice to get some feedback.
Thanks.
 
Well wireless internet has to get cheaper. It is a technology that costs the customer a huge ONce-off payment (either buying a UTD or Router wich is around R2000-R2700, or if its a fixed wireless company. usually big-ass antenna on the roof with Router at the pc, but also at R1500-R3000)

Then always remember, when u hear the word "Wireless" always think of Signal Strength / Quality of signal. Cause no matter how good the antenna is, or how good your signal is running at. A signal can bounce, and towers that provide that signal do break. *if one tower in the chain to the main tower kicks, then yur stuck offline until they fix it. Except if they are smart and each tower provides its own internet connection, but thats costly*

Wireless Pings are always high and sometimes hecticly unstable. That will reflect in your download / upload speeds aswell.

Also most/many wireless company's charge around R500-R700 for 128K connection or have a limited 3gig cap.

Where'as an ADSL router costs R550 to R700 for the big brands, and ADSL installation fee is about R420+-

ADSL line costs :
384K line rental is R245
Normal phone line rental is R100+-
3gig cap at telkom is R250 (they are kinda leniant on the cap, maybe allowing 3-5gigs)

I'm not a fan of Telkom, but they have come a long way.

R245+R100+R250 = R595 (for 3gig to 5gig cap) *very reliable, and u can even play games over this connection*

Then your basically set to download some stuff, play some online gaming, and alot of surfin'. I would say, all in all a better deal at the end of the day
 
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Havent paid attention to ADSL costing.. It has vastly dropped over the last 6 months or so..

billy101, i wish i could go the Telkom (ADSL) route, but they dont offer it here. I hope they can offer it where you are..
 
iBurst has just been voted 'Broadband Provider of the Year 2006' at the myADSL conference at Vodaworld, Midrand.
 
billy101 said:
I signed a 3 gig contract with them in feb
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I'm sorry to inform you that iBurst have you by the proverbial short and curlies. I also signed a 3gig contract in Feb and I'm also not happy with the current quality of service I get. They changed their policy in December 2005, all contracts that were signed after that date cannot be cancelled. If you want to get rid of them, you have to buy out the remainder of your contract. So, 15 months remaining times R699 equals R10485 that you have to pay them to stop using their "service". Stopping your debit order is a breach of contract and they can have you listed and obtain a judgment against you.

You also cannot have someone else take over your contract.

So, I'm stuck having to play XBOX Live over a wireless connection that has intermittent pings and poor speed because the tower I connect to is over-saturated.

The friendly people at IBurst are getting their money every month, so my problems are just that, mine!

I'll probably get a 384 dsl line and keep the iBurst for downloading large files and going as far over the cap as possible.
 
kingrob said:
iBurst has just been voted 'Broadband Provider of the Year 2006' at the myADSL conference at Vodaworld, Midrand.
Click to expand...

It's only the select few who has problems with them, but I think their customers in general are happy with their service.
 
Yup I think Michael hit the nail on the head, GBM maybe up north where you stay, but I even doubt that since jhb have had problems for much longer than CT.
Hopefully for your sake when they start with your base station upgrade it will not be a downgrade.:rolleyes:
 
MrH said:
Yup I think Michael hit the nail on the head, GBM maybe up north where you stay, but I even doubt that since jhb have had problems for much longer than CT.
Hopefully for your sake when they start with your base station upgrade it will not be a downgrade.:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

I don't think the basestation "upgrades" they did here in Cape Town were the 135mb upgrades. Is that what you guys are thinking? It could be.. but I doubt it, they said those would come with the 2mb speed upgrades, they were just doing some network tweaking by the sounds of it, or atleast going by Ed's description.

So I dont know if they will be doing basestation upgrades for the whole country just because they did it in Cape Town.

If our upgrade was the big one, surely there would be notably less congestion on the major towers like the CBD.
 
who.is.michael said:
Select few, think you are badly mistaken - if you consider 3/4 of Cape Town a select few maybe...
Click to expand...

Despite the problems in Cape Town, and I admit they are a bit extreme, surely most iBurst clients are happy with their service. If they weren't, iBurst wouldn't have been voted as the best BB provider of the year.
 
Ekhaatvensters said:
I don't think the basestation "upgrades" they did here in Cape Town were the 135mb upgrades. Is that what you guys are thinking? It could be.. but I doubt it, they said those would come with the 2mb speed upgrades, they were just doing some network tweaking by the sounds of it, or atleast going by Ed's description.

So I dont know if they will be doing basestation upgrades for the whole country just because they did it in Cape Town.

If our upgrade was the big one, surely there would be notably less congestion on the major towers like the CBD.
Click to expand...

Then their tweaking went very wrong since I'm way below my normal speeds.:sick:

I don't listen to what Ed says anymore since nothing said so far has come to light, all thats happened is that in general the CT system has degraded and not upgraded.:rolleyes:
Sure you say yours seems better but what about the rest of us that had reasonable speeds before and now sit with worse than we had before.:eek:
 
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GreatBigMouth said:
Despite the problems in Cape Town, and I admit they are a bit extreme, surely most iBurst clients are happy with their service. If they weren't, iBurst wouldn't have been voted as the best BB provider of the year.
Click to expand...

Nobody is more surprised than myself that they managed to pull that off not that they deserve it.

Then again been topdog ISP in sa does not say much does it?:rolleyes:
 
Who voted, I sure as hell didn't!

GreatBigMouth said:
Despite the problems in Cape Town, and I admit they are a bit extreme, surely most iBurst clients are happy with their service. If they weren't, iBurst wouldn't have been voted as the best BB provider of the year.
Click to expand...


Who voted and where was this advertised and what was the sample size, etc.

Which survey are you referring to? As long as you are not referring to myADSL, they voted Sentech as the best BB provider in 2005, LOL - their assessment doesn't have much value - beyond keeping all the Joburg companies happy - although myADSL is seen as a consumer protector they can't afford to ruffle feathers, they need sponsors. (Their survey doesn’t say much - what they did, is compare rotten apples with rotten apples, it doesn’t indicate if the service provider is any good – if they did go about it in the correct way and truly fulfilled their consumer protection role, they would have had no sponsors or credibility left by now - not that they truly deserve it. This is the way the little rotten system works in our dark Africa. The boat is too small, you rock it and you’ll fall out.)

I think you are mistaken again - http://www.businessday.co.za/articles/technology.aspx?ID=BD4A319182 please provide url?
 
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GBM, damit where did you get that info from, anyway stated in that article Michael posted they said about iburst: "but it was knocked into second place because it does not have national coverage."
That is slightly wrong as they don't even have stable local coverage nevermind national.:rolleyes:
 
MrH said:
Then their tweaking went very wrong since I'm way below my normal speeds.:sick:

I don't listen to what Ed says anymore since nothing said so far has come to light, all thats happened is that in general the CT system has degraded and not upgraded.:rolleyes:
Sure you say yours seems better but what about the rest of us that had reasonable speeds before and now sit with worse than we had before.:eek:
Click to expand...

Ja, I'm not saying the upgrade was good or anything. It hasn't done much for more, but browsing seems a bit faster, maby something to do with international latency, I'll see when its back to normal week days.

How they messed up your connection I don't know.. I'm sure th tower is still fine in terms of load, how has your signal changed in UTts, if at all.
 
EHV, no I have not rechecked my signal with UTts yet since it requires me to move one of my PC's closer to the modem on the other side of the room which is not as easy as you'd think.
I'll probably do a test in the next few days though, just a pity it won't work while connected to the router.
 
Mr. H, I didn't think I'd ever say this.... but I think you're right about switching to DSL if you reside in Cape Town. :( (Oh crud, did I just say that? :p)
 
I think iBurst's service in Cape Town will improve with the new office... it better, cos I'm planning of moving back there soon!!
 
GBM, actually if iBurst got their act together with qualified staff then the best option is iBurst as far as I'm concerned, the mobility and lack of phone lines suits me, but alas it seems they just don't have what it takes.

I just checked my bank account and see they deducted my payment yesterday when they assured me it would be done on the 1st of every month, this just shows you that the accounts department is still run by idiots.
 
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