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Author Topic: iBurst - "WE STUFFED UP!"  (Read 2135 times)

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Epsilon

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iBurst - "WE STUFFED UP!"
« on: May 03, 2011, 12:06:15 PM »
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For those that haven't heard yet, iBurst has brought a new 2MB/s modem to market.
Two problems with this nifty piece of hardware:
1) The Price - R 3499 !  :o
2) They then stuffed up the press release.

Read on for the juicy details: (Source : iBurst web site)
Quote
It’s time to ‘fess up – we’re big enough to say “WE STUFFED UP!”

Last edited 2011-04-11T20:10:14

In our latest billing communiqué, we mentioned the new 2Mbps modem, and were so enthralled with it, we told you the price for the prepaid modem only, and forgot to mention the price on upfront purchases and contract pricing!

WERE SORRY!
We hate to inconvenience you, so were really sorry we got it wrong!

GET IT RIGHT!
OK, so whats the deal? Our fantastic new 2Mbps modem is priced as follows:

R1299 Prepaid bundles
R3499 Upfront purchases
R179/month x 24 months 24-Month contracts

Sometimes these little omissions happen but we try and catch them before they make a mountain out of a molehill! Thanks to those of you who let us know about the error we appreciate your input!

Kind regards,
The iBurst Team

THEN:
Why is the contract modem nearly 3 times as expensive as the Prepaid model? (Oh and by the way you can't use a Prepaid modem on a contract thanks to the clever boys at iBurst HQ)
I can honestly not see myself shelling out that kind of money on a Modem !
FAIL
Come on boys, let's get real here.
« Last Edit: May 03, 2011, 12:08:10 PM by Epsilon »
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Jason

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Re: iBurst - "WE STUFFED UP!"
« Reply #1 on: May 03, 2011, 01:47:30 PM »
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I read about this EPIC FAIL in a mail I got from these idiots.

Believe it or not.. they claim they owe me money... two years later after I got rid of them. I've been fighting with them about this since 2008... I have just given up with it and resigned myself that it is an accounting error. So every month, they send me a statement... I am keeping them all to show the world how incompetent this company is, out of all the stupid ones the world over. One day when I am overseas I will pull out the statements and we can all p1ss ourselves laughing at the AFRICAN WAY OF DOING BUSINESS...

Anybody who wants to spend that kind of money (R3499) on a system that is shaped to death, needs serious psychiatric help. We all hate Telkom but they're the only cost-effective option there is right now! The speeds bring no benefit when you cannot use it for real things such as downloading movies and music. For the amount of money spent on that modem you could get a year's worth of DSL access without trying to hard... and unshaped to boot!

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Epsilon

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Re: iBurst - "WE STUFFED UP!"
« Reply #2 on: May 03, 2011, 02:34:30 PM »
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There's also Vendor lock-in. Yuo can use that modem with iBurst and no one else.

An ADSL modem you can use with almost any ISP (Telkom just needs to supply the copper line), switch when better deals come along and speed wise there is absolutely no comparison. Telkom are currently upgrading all their 4MB/s clients close enough to exchanges or DSLAM's to 10MB/s and their price remains unchanged.

Stability and latency also beats wireless by a country mile.

Lastly, if iBurst had any sense whatsoever, they could have used this as a clever marketing tool. They have tons of subribers whose contracts have expired and are now doing business month-to-month in addtion to the pure month-to-month customers.
Would it not have been a great incentive to say to customers : Renew your contract and we will give you this new 2MB/s modem for free (included in the new contract) to thank you for your loyalty?
I'm sure a lot of customers would have jumped at the opportunity.
Talk about missed opportunities and piss poor thinking by the marketing department.

Finally, they are one of the few ISP's left that do not offer a 24/7 uncapped product.

FAIL
« Last Edit: May 03, 2011, 02:38:01 PM by Epsilon »
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Jason

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Re: iBurst - "WE STUFFED UP!"
« Reply #3 on: May 03, 2011, 03:13:12 PM »
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As you know Epsilon, I personally asked the then CEO Jannie van Zyl about the shaping, because I figured that if they at least relaxed that, it might be a worthwhile proposition for certain applications. His response was "I'll look into it" and nothing has changed!

I also found out recently iBurst has failed in Australia and has since been discontinued there. I haven't looked but I suspect that one will soon see cheap modems being flogged on eBay, but knowing iBurps they'll blacklist all those serial numbers.

Latency was a big issue for me with iBurst.. I can't tell you how that drove me round the bend, especially when one is trying to post on a forum such as this. Not only that, their DNS is forever falling over, leading to legitimate sites being blocked or appearing as "down"

It amazes me they can shape the thing solidly, so much so that one needs a VPN to bypass it, yet they cannot even get the billing right after 5 years in the game.
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Epsilon

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Re: iBurst - "WE STUFFED UP!"
« Reply #4 on: May 03, 2011, 04:35:52 PM »
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Yes Jason,

The list goes on and on...
Regular DNS issues for years I can attest to personally.
On billing I had a 3 year running battle with them.
I'm not a gamer, but they have been complaining since day 1 about the latency issues.

Uncapped is fast becoming the de-facto standard with most ISP's nowadays, but iBurst won't budge.
Sure they have the Midnight till 8am uncapped VAS (You pay extra) for that, but who is awake to monitor the downloads. I need to do this because often the whole system just bombs in the middle of the night for a couple of minutes or longer, forcing me to manually resume downloads. These are mostly from sites that do not support download managers, so that's not an option either.
There are frequent outages which is always blamed on 'an upstream provider'. It's never their fault.

No - Definitely no new modems for me thanks.
« Last Edit: May 03, 2011, 04:38:32 PM by Epsilon »
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Jason

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Re: iBurst - "WE STUFFED UP!"
« Reply #5 on: May 04, 2011, 07:00:58 AM »
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Quote
There are frequent outages which is always blamed on 'an upstream provider'. It's never their fault.
Ah yes.. how could I forget that... the basestations dropping like flies, especially when the electricity in the area goes out... conveniently blamed on a "upstream provider"
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