Netsource is NOT uncapped

MrPinK

Originally posted by Zascar
Maybe smoeone should send them a link... They might realise just how gay they are being...

I don't think they care, they don't want residential business anymore. Offering the service uncapped was a stupid idea in the first place. It was never going to work. At least now they've put the cap in place and sorted out the latency problems.

De Rebel

Originally posted by Zascar
I agree, does anyone know if Netfarce management have read these posts? Maybe smoeone should send them a link... They might realise just how gay they are being...

Send the link yourself. IMHO every post here should be sent to louise@netsource.ie which is the e-mail address for Louise McKeown, Marketing Manager for Netsource who, in this post said

Originally posted by lmck
Hi all

Louise McKeown, from Netsource here <SNIP> so should you have any issues, questions please e-mail me directly (louise@netsource.ie).

Regards
Louise McKeown

Why waste the invite.

Speaking for myself, their behaviour in relation to their retail customers has caused me to eliminate them from being shortlisted for a number of business opportunities recently.

chill

Originally posted by De Rebel
Speaking for myself, their behaviour in relation to their retail customers has caused me to eliminate them from being shortlisted for a number of business opportunities recently.

Well thankfully they seem to be paying more attention to the thousands of happy business customers than to the same few whinging leaches that caused the EsatSurfNoLimits fiasco. For myself I can also say that more than two thirds of the many clients and business colleagues I have referred to NetSource are delighted with them.

I write to them from time to time asking for confirmation that I am on a low contention ring and to insist that they strangle the people that spend most of their time downloading illegal material and bunging up the bandwith in the process.

dahamsta

How do they know these people are downloading illegal material? I hope you're not suggesting they monitor their customers traffic data?

(I'm being facetious btw.)

adam

Boro

Originally posted by chill

I write to them from time to time asking for confirmation that I am on a low contention ring and to insist that they strangle the people that spend most of their time downloading illegal material and bunging up the bandwith in the process.

That is a completely unreasonable assumption to make. Many people use their net connection to download legally available ISO's (linux anyone?) and free applications. There is all kinds of shareware out there. Game demos are getting very large. There are communities of people who share music that they create themselves. There are movie trailers and game trailers, all completely free. There are those that download documents dealing in specifications of various technologies and protocols (for college etc). There are game patches, application patches. There are legitimate music downloading sites (itunes), there are e-books. Not to mention online gaming, constant upload and download. There are people that use video conferencing. There are people that surf constantly, just reading, replying and trolling. Constant emailing, especially with attachments take up lots of bandwidth.

All these uses of the internet are legitimate. To turn around and say that because someone is using a lot of bandwidth is that they are doing something illegal is completely out of order. Basically what you are doing is going to netsource and saying "I like to pay lots of money for a service that i do not use to the extent that it is advertised. Please put me and all the others who like to get shafted in a corner by ourselves. PS anyone who downloads stuff is probably doing something illegal - ban them"

Its stuff like the drivel you spouted that lets companies get away with shafting people who believe their 'advertising'. Your 'holier-than-thou' attitude is shocking. Maybe you should try opening your mind slightly before you complain about others who legitimately use the service that they pay for.

(not a netsource customer, just cant stand hipocrisy)

dangerman

while i agree that netsource are wrong to state that they have no download limit on their site in one place and a 4gig a week cap in the other...

thats complete BOLLOX all of you are saying about legitimate d/loading - i know countless people on IOL bb who sit around 'thinking up reasons' to use up their cap.

how many linux iso's has everyone been downloading?

its just lies.

be honest, radsl in ireland sucks, but it is here. there will come a time when all the companies provide adequate service inline with european averages, but at the moment, you ultra-d/loaders have to pay more for the privelage of getting all those billions of linux installs u need.

I'm not defending netsource, i'm just calling the majority of people who claim they use that kind of cap legitimately liars.

Note that i haven't said that about anyone here, just in general, come on, you guys MUST know it's true.

I have 3 puters, 3 proper users and i still manage to keep happily within the 16gig. When it was first installed i had to explain that we can't leave Yahoo! Launch streamin audio on 24x7 and after initial 1gig+ days we settled into proper pretty average usage.

People are just collecting things off the net. Downloading the new series of Enterprise (losers) or whatever. People start these d/loads in the morning b4 work/college.

People boast about their mp3 collections ' i have 10,000 songs ' SO WHAT? Then they just go download everything, cause they can, not cause they really want the stuff.

krattapopov

what i would like to know is what home user, would use up so much d/l memory legitamately, fair enough it was advertised as uncapped but i really wanna know what people are downloading that uses up so much memory, legally

the mind boggles

Mountjoy Mugger

Originally posted by De Rebel
Send the link yourself. IMHO every post here should be sent to louise@netsource.ie which is the e-mail address for Louise McKeown, Marketing Manager for Netsource...

That's the same Louise who hasn't posted here since July?

captainpat

Boro,

I applaud your post, mainly because it mirrors my opinions, and secondly because it states them even better.

I also am not a Netsource customer. I almost was, but held off to see what would happen in practice when the "hungry" users signed up. So I was in two minds about the results when the present situation developed.

I have been living with eircom Solo for 18 months and have been permitted to scandalously overrun my cap. Now I have most of my download backlog of MP3 finished (I'm 60 yrs old, so old Rock'n'Roll is most, though not all).

When Netsource placed their offering, I felt that it was dangerous for them, and therefore for me, so did not transfer to them. I was recently given the miraculous opportunity to avail of the NTL Cable 600 Kbps service, which I signed up to within 15 minutes of receiving the brochure. They also now have a 1 GB/Day limit, but at least they are/were honest about it.

I will not cancel my eircom Solo, but will step back to the Starter system, and have two Broadband connections. I have waited for this longer than most of you, so no envy please!

Just to put the legal/ISO/MP3 downloads situation in context, I currently am having such difficulty in downloading anything from P2P sites that I wonder where the good bandwith stuff is coming from. I suspect that the high-speed download sites are so secret and esoteric that the number of users will not be any threat to the sanctimonious bandwith non-users. But I will keep seeking, and will defend my right to use what I was sold, and what I pay for. Meantime, I am in little danger of exceeding my 1GB/day cap, regardless how hard I try!

So there! (me stamps foot).

adnans

Originally posted by dangerman
Downloading the new series of Enterprise (losers) or whatever.

i regret NOTHING!!1

adnans

Jokah

Just to let you know. I had a problem with my Netsource account and had to cancel it due to unforseen circumstances.

Now three weeks have passed and I am renewing my subscription with Netsource.

I was lucky to be talking to a senior manager in there who said they would hook me up again, rollover what I have already paid to them ( I had only been on the service a month when I had cancelled and had two months left to use) and if I wanted they would hook me up with a free modem until I got a new one delivered.

I also had a question in my fax to them asking about the capping service. I have been told by this senior manager that there is a limit of 16 gigs a month for SOHO users.

Now don't shoot the messenger I'm only passing on what I learned 20 minutes ago.

She said some people were downloading 30-40 gigs + a month and these people were crippling the bandwidth for other users.

Now from my own view, Netsource has been very good to me and the speeds have been excellent....Support have always looked after me and I find the service excellent. If I didn't I wouldnt have signed up again..

Thoughts anyone?

adnans

thats common knowledge already for netsource customers XPthink. im grateful that they finally included some kind of a limit which means that games pings are back to normal and the service is better than ever.

adnans

Jokah

I believe there was a post about a month or two back talking about the 30-40gigers who were downloading rakes of information.

Yeah it is good information. i mean the max a month I would download is about 5-6 gigs. I think in my first month I downloaded only 3 gigs. Reason being: the posts about netsource starting to CAP really threw me off downloading for that month.

Anyway, I heard 16 gigs a month is reasonable for Netsource so cool....hopefully peace of mind for now!

Ripwave

Originally posted by muffen
Seems to me that you are completly clueless.

Do me a favour. Take a pencil and paper, and caculate the actual capacity of a 512Kbs connection over a month. Then divide it by 48 (the contention ration for all RADSL products).

Then tell me who's clueless for thinking that "unlimited" means "all you can eat".

chabsey

Originally posted by Ripwave
Do me a favour. Take a pencil and paper, and caculate the actual capacity of a 512Kbs connection over a month. Then divide it by 48 (the contention ration for all RADSL products).

Then tell me who's clueless for thinking that "unlimited" means "all you can eat".

As has been said before, technically Ripwave is correct, but in reality companies are asking for trouble if they go around selling their product based on these claims. If they even put a little asterisk beside the 'unlimited' when they quote it as a reason to choose their service then that would be forgivable, reading the small print is what most consumers should do. However, some ISPs don't let you know that 'unlimited' actually means 'Fair usage' and they are happy to deceive you until you start 'abusing' their service (the term abuse is relative to each ISP).

Most intelligent companies these days advertise their products with little disclaimers like 'Available as long as stocks last' or 'Actual size may differ!' or '2 AA batteries not included', but some ISPs don't bother with this small print when making claims about their service. I have a flyer from an ISP that advertises unlimited downloads and doesn't mention anywhere that there's a fair usage policy, no small print, nothing. I really find it hard to blame the people who sign up to these ISPs with the intention of downloading loads and then find they can't, of course they're angry!

In the right? Obviously not.
But misled and therefore angry as a result? Yes. And I don't know, maybe there's a case for getting angry, if we just accept the backward service Ireland provides then it'll take longer to improve.

dazberry

My reason for going NS were 4 fold:
1. uncapped
2. fixed IP
3. short(er) contract
4. keep phone with eircom (not my call).

I'm happy to stay with NS, my connection is solid, my pings are now solid no doubt at other's expense (not a great factor for me, but is a benefit), but I am concerned about their policies, notably on advertising. As its capped, I think its only fair to advertise it as such, and the pseudo 2 month contract should be corrected, if its 3 months or there abouts (spotted this before signing) it should be stated this way. Ultimately they're only doing themselves a dis-service in the long run.

D.

muffen

what i would like to know is what home user, would use up so much d/l memory legitamately, fair enough it was advertised as uncapped but i really wanna know what people are downloading that uses up so much memory, legally

1, I Livestream shoutcast radio at 192Kbit an average of 4h a day. Its always running when I'm home and not using the computer cause I love it. This is about 340 megs a day, which gives you 10gig a month. I even have a computer in my kitchen for this specific purpose, and I stream it to my xbox in the livingroom aswell. I have setup an internal shoutcast server so only one stream going.
(192 / 8) * 3600 * 4 * 30 = about 10 gigs.

2, Play games. I play a few games online, and with all the patches and maps etc that get DLed, I think about a gig a month for this is resonable.

3, Browse the web, DL mp3's and the occasional videostream. I stream TV sometimes, and there's some cool videos I've seen. Furthermore, I tend to look at a lot of trailers, which average 30megs. Only 10 trailers gives you 300 megs a month. Combine all this, it's prolly about 3 - 5 gigs a month.

4, DL random stuff when I'm bored from download.com, you can find quite a few things there... keeps you occupied when there's nothing better to do.

5, What difference does it make what I do? My ISP provides me with a service, and I use it as advertised. Who cares if I am streaming radio or illegally downloading enterprise episodes?
The ISP has nothing to do with this, just like Eircom is not responsible if I plan to bomb the entire world over the phone. Actually, if they did complain about anything I said over the phone, I would sue them and win (not even with a courtorder are they the ones who will listen to my conversations). The exact same thing goes for the ISP. I don't understand how it can be soooo difficult to understand this for some people.

Is the hardware store responsible if I buy a crowbar to break into a bank?

Is the electronic store responsible if I buy Pic16C86 circuits to build piratecards?

Trust me, I can give you a thousand more examples on why it is besides the point what I use my connection for!!

Now, that said, I understand that netsource screwed up. However, all I wanted was one email, phonecall or any type of information on their page about this from day 1.

If they would have told me they had problems, I wouldn't have streamed shoutcast while sleeping, like I did sometimes because I expected the service they advertised.

I can add that on average I DLed 20gigs a month for the two months I had netsource.

The thing I want people to understand is that all I wanted was information! This is the core of this entire issue. Now I have the Eircom 1MBit line uncapped for 204 euros a month. The thing is, I don't care that it's 204 euros a month. I read up on it and I knew what I was getting! The only thing I expect is to get what was advertised, and if that changes TELL ME!!!!!!!

Anyone who thinks netsource is great, please answer this: Am I unreasonable thinking that I would get an uncapped service when they said I would? Did I do anything wrong so I deserved my connection being brought down to 1/4th speed? Who is to blame for this, me our netsource?

Would you do business with an electrical company that decided, without telling you, to provide you with 1/4th of the electricity you need for your house?

I, like many others, lost the faith in Netsource. They have proven they are all but customer centered. It doesn't matter what they do now, this issue will be remembered for a loooong time.

Jokah

"The thing I want people to understand is that all I wanted was information! This is the core of this entire issue"

Good point muffen. I can understand someone would be very frustrated if they realised they were capped and not told about it.

Now I am not a heavy user like you because I did all my downloading of music and movies and programs in the States before I came back to Ireland:D . So my average downloads are about 6-7 gigs a month...

I also cheat and download at work...1mb line....

Its cool for you to have a 1mb line now. You stated that the issue will be remembered for a long time? Why bother....its behind you now and you shouldn't fret about it anymore...

Its good to b!tch about it here and let off some steam..

MrPinK

Originally posted by muffen
Am I unreasonable thinking that I would get an uncapped service when they said I would?

It'd say naive more than unreasonable. No matter how netsource describe it, the product is just a rehash of eircom's bargin basement, 48:1, 4 gig cap radsl service. There was no way it was ever going to work uncapped. Netsource were kidding themeselves if they honestly thought it would.

DaithiSurfer

wrong!!
Netfarce were kidding their CUSTOMERS.

MrPinK

I'd say they're idiots rather than liars

dangerman

i'd love to know what happened inside ns

- id guess it was a case that sales saw us residential users as just more $$$$$ so just signed up everyone, probably without any1 ever even thinking about the consequences.

i'd love to know if upper management actually considered what has happened and decided to it anyway, cause signing up and cancelling orders is easy enough, and they still make a few months dosh + installation.

That's cynical, i guess it could have been just sales being completely ignorant of the tech consequences, which is quite possible, when u consider the relationship between sales + tech in a lot of IT companies.

Or they just could have been all blissfully ignorant of what sort of demands an uncapped package would put on them. But could u have an ISP that stupid?

Venom

Originally posted by MrPinK
It'd say naive more than unreasonable. No matter how netsource describe it, the product is just a rehash of eircom's bargin basement, 48:1, 4 gig cap radsl service. There was no way it was ever going to work uncapped. Netsource were kidding themeselves if they honestly thought it would.

They screwed up in there estimation of the effect the extra home users would have on there service. Thats just tough luck on them. Its not up to the customer to know the netsourse service is rehash of another companies product. They didnt start out with and still havent changed the SOHO product discription on there website or sales orders from "Unlimited" to "16 GB cap" and are advertising the SOHO product under misleading pretences.

This is FRAUD.

They never informed there customers of the change in acceptable usage of the SOHO package. This is very bad business practice not to mention vastly changing the product specs after its been sold, and could be considered illegal and them liabel for legal procedings.

Changing the wording of there product discription needs to be asap for the SOHO package. Correcting the dreadful treatment of the original home users who signed up for the service when it was first launched and were lied to over the product they were subscribing to, has to be addressed with either compensation, leaving them as uncapped or full refund of installation charges.

dangerman

They never informed there customers of the change in acceptable usage of the SOHO package. This is very bad business practice not to mention vastly changing the product specs after its been sold, and could be considered illegal and them liabel for legal procedings.

unfortunately, you're wrong.

In their contract:


10. Service

NETSOURCE reserve the right to change service without prior notice.

Venom

With them still advertising a capped service as uncapped they still ****ed if they get taken to court. Changing the service is one thing but falsely claming there product is something its not is a totaly different kettle of fish. If they had of changed a 20gb service to a 16gb service, your comments would be correct. Capped and uncapped downloading tho are major different services.

DeVore

11. Netsource reserves the right to stab you.


Just because it says it in a contract doesnt make it legal or indeed ethical.

DeV.

Jokah

"Just because it says it in a contract doesnt make it legal "

Ehhh if you sign a contract you are bound by Law to that contract. This is ethical surely.....

It does indeed state in the contract that "NETSOURCE reserve the right to change service without prior notice."

What is service? Well the service they provide customers. So, they can do what they want.....

secret_squirrel

Originally posted by XPThink
Ehhh if you sign a contract you are bound by Law to that contract. This is ethical surely.....

Um...no they cant - you cannot sign any of your legal rights away in a contract. And contract can always be challenged with various legal ploys anyway.

If their contract or behaviour breaches any consumer protection legislation then you have a way of fighting back - if you are prepared to.

Jokah

"challenged with various legal ploys anyway"

"then you have a way of fighting back - if you are prepared to."

Good point.....who is prepared to fight?

DaithiSurfer

Think about it even. Basically what they are saying is - 'It doesn't matter what you pay us for, we can simply change anything we want whenever we want'.
Its like you get on a plane to tokyo. Aer Lingus land in amsterdam and say sorry thats the end of the trip.
We reserve the right to change service without prior notice.- please **** off.

Thats not binding at all.


Writing something like that in your terms and conditions is much the same as a cloakroom in a pub saying 'Management are not responsible for goods lost or stolen'.
If fact they are responsible.
It is just a ploy so that you can point to a sign and the customer thinks they have no rights and leaves you alone.
I worked in a nightclub and we did that all the time.
When a customer complained it was mostly enough to point to the sign.
But the odd one was prepared to go further and the nightclub ALWAYS compensated those people.

In fact i pointed this out to Netfarce when i refused to pay the full wack when we got throttled.
They backed down and we were back to normal.
Now we could also bring them to court for compensation and full refund for the 'not as advertised' service that we received before according to our solicitor, but we dont want our company name in the papers involved in legal stuff.

However i do reccommend that home users who got screwed take netfarce to the small claims court. You will win. AND Netfarce will have to explain themselves to the court. They'll get sick of this soon enough.

That statement will be ignored in a TOC document.