Isp

[AdrianF (Adrian)]

I have been with a certain ISP now for about 16 years, started with 14.4k (WOW). I have now moved to another town and I tried to get my ISP to transfer my account/connection to my new address, no problems they say. Made the request to be told 5 days for the transfer to take effect. 6 days later no internet so called them to be told that the ISP had cancelled my request to transfer the account but wouldnt give me a reason except the decision was made . I have sent an email to my ISP 5 days ago to get clarification but no answer yet. I have paid lots of $$$ (79.95 p/m for 25/25 gig for the last 7 years(?)) to this company compared to Bigpond 49.95 for 100gig (if I bundle my other phones). Because I am in the billing period I have told my current ISP I want my account terminated at the end of this billing period 31 Dec.I stayed with the ISP as a loyal customer.
Currently using a Telstra USB Turbo for internet.
Obviously some on this forum use Bigpond as their ISP, how do you find them? Good/Bad/Indifferent?

Adrian

[Karls48 (Karl)]

Loyalty counts for nothing these days. I had similar experience. I'm avoiding Telstra but they may be OK now since 3 Amigos left.

[Exfso (Peter)]

Adrian, I like you was with a provider for a long time, and they provided excellent service. I was made an offer by Big Pond that was too good to refuse, so I opted to change. It was the biggest mistake I have made on the internet. Not only could big pond not supply the same speeds I was getting with my original provider, but it was so slow as to be around dial up speeds for over half of the day, when it was supposed to be ADSL2+. Everytime I rang them, I got someone from overseas, usually the Phillipines and they had no idea, plus there was the huge waiting times and the language barrier. I was told by one of these cretins that I would just have to put up with it. WRONG, I went to the Telecommunications Ombudsman and that made Telstra/bigpond jump. Mind you they could not fix the problem as it turned out that they had far too many subscribers for the bandwidth available. So in the end I had my contract terminated with them at no cost to me. So in my opinion Big Pong is a no go. It may well be different in your area, but you will still have to put up with the overseas call centres and their rude attitude especially if you are calling with a problem. I am now back with my original ISP and getting excellent download speeds all off the same exchange as telstra. Go Figure!!!

[AdrianF (Adrian)]

Not so sure about my other choice of ISP either. They were supposed to have my connection up and running yesterday (30th) by 1pm. No signs of the connection by 5pm so called the 1800 number to be told that the line is active and then transferred to someone who's language is something other than english to help me setup the modem. After many "say agains" I gave up as at this stage I was ready to throw the modem out the window attached to the IT professional on the other end of the phone, after all how much can you take after 1 1/2 hours on the phone? He tried every setting in the book but no joy.

Called again today to try and sort out the problem to be asked to insert the CD from the package. What CD? What package? No one told me about a package.
But I suppose I cant expect much else as I signed up for a 50 gig plan at 49.95 a month and received an SMS to confirm my order for a 200 gig plan at 79.95 had been placed.

Adrian

[AdrianF (Adrian)]

Well it's been a week or so since I received the starter pack. Went through the setup as in the instructions and no joy. Call tech support still no joy. Although I will admit we now have Internet sort of. Drops out every few minutes reset modem still drops out. Maybe it's the modem, go and buy a new modem still same problem. Call tech support they cant sort it out and was told a tech would call within 8 hours that was 4 days ago. Called again today to be told that the job reference number the support gave me and we verified by me reading the number back is not a valid number. The problem as now been escalated to "if you don't fix within 24 hours I will cancel my Internet 2 mobile phones and the house phone and going to the ombudsman and making a formal complaint" this brought promises that the problem will be fixed ASAP and no charge for Internet until they fix.
You would think with the technology available to the ISP things would go smoothly Am I asking too much?


Adrian

[mswhin63 (Malcolm)]

Hi Adrian, I moved from IINet to Telstra because IINet could not fix a problem with the line that was causing my internet to drop out. Well I move because I had to avoid the politics of Telstra owned ADSL 1 line which is the primary cause of my problem. Unfortunately the problem is less but at least I could get Telstra out to do something.

Overall I am now quite happy but prefer the services available to IINet and the download upload rates available. Eventually I had to settle for 200Gig where 100G would have been satisfactory with IINet.

The main thing I found is the quick responses from Telstra call centre which is far quicker than IINet and many other especially OPTUS.
I know that if it not possible to talk to an operator they are required to transfer you to an Australian Call Centre if requested. In most cases I do not have a problem.