I received the following message from a Coms staff member on Thursday in response to a enquiry I made about the extreme throttling I have experienced and my request for a MAC:

".....Please be advised that Coms do not intend to throttle traffic; however our hand has been forced due to some users abusing the network. Coms run a 'fair usage' policy, which some users have been taking advantage of. At present the helpdesk are waiting to hear when these tests will finish and we will update our customers as soon as we can.

We apologise if this has caused you any inconvenience, however here is your MAC code if you wish to use it:"

This is the sort of rubbish I experienced at the dawn of broadband from those pioneering stalwarts of customer service at Wanadoo and Tiscali.

Thank you ADSL24, may you rest in peace. Xilo here I come.

So in other words you've found that some of your customers actually want to use the service you've sold them... and some want to get their money's worth...

How about some specifics? 10% of how many customers? 50% of how much bandwidth?
What percentage of that during peak time? (i.e. paid for allowance) What percentage is during off peak?
How much of that is p2p? How much of that is video streaming?

Same goes for the specifics of the throttle... what level is the throttle set for? how many kbps and when?

On the couple of times I've wanted to grab something from usenet or torrent, I've been hit with a 20-30kbps throttle. That's as good as blocking it completely.

In reply to a post by Telemicus:

Again, just trying to see if you have improved on your communication to your customers in the last few days given that the amount of complaints on here will only be a fraction of those people with an issue that again you have not yet been in touch with.

So true!

Since when did Coms have a 'fair use' policy?
We have a usage cap during peak times and as far as I was aware, usage during off peak is unmetered.
If Coms have slapped a cap on off peak now, all of a sudden, what is it?
Coms, we need specifics, damn it! Enough of the vagaries, smoke & mirrors and lies, give your customers specifics!

I really did enjoy being accused, in a kind of obvious yet round-about way, of abuse. Great way to regain the confidence of a loyal ADSL customer of 8 years considering migration.

Coms seem to have constructed a deliberate, urgent, strategy of antagonising heavy users to leave. Anyone up for starting a sweepstakes on how long their creditors decide Coms have got to balance the books before calling in the administrators?

It says they have an FUP on their website... it was conveniently left out of everything mentioned during the transition from ADSL24 to their service.

What a strange thread.

Coms decide they wish to break their side of the contract. Despite reassure they would not only weeks ago (things can change in time, but not in this short space of time...).

Rather than go after the high usage users (even though they've done nothing wrong apart from use the service they are paying a premium for) Coms decide to restrict everyone traffic while "testing". Normally I would have thought you would find out about the bandwidth commitment before buying a broadband company.

There is no communication about the testing. Why not a notice on the website indicating you were doing some work to your network?

To be honest the traffic shaping doesn't effect me, but I'm going to leave anyway just because of the poor way it's been handled.

So far, Coms have changed my SNR on migration without telling me, DNS issues, and now changed my service while a) Saying several time they would not b) Not even telling me. The online portal/my account seems to work when it wishes too

Loved ADSL24, but it's time for Xilo. Looks better and cheaper

Edited by deleted (Mon 31-Mar-14 22:24:29)

Ross you my friend have hit the nail right on the head! Every point you make is a valid one and deserves a valid answer, I for one am completely furious at the way this had been done to us.

All the talk of no change in contract, terms of use, down grading of service the list goes on and on. Every single thing they said would not change has in fact changed and all without the slightest warning or notification to us the customer, we even find out now via somebody else that they also have a FUP in place too. I admit I am a heavy user and yes I use torrents a lot, I also use the BBC Iplayer and download most of the shows in HD that come in mostly at about 1GB a time. Although speed on downloading that is not affected there are times that I download a whole bunch of episodes and that could come in at about 10-12GB a day. Ok so not every day but that's what I pay my £30 a month for and mostly I do it in the off peak times as with my torrents.

I am grateful that Paul has told us something but in actual fact he has not really told us anything at all. It was only when he was pushed by all the complaints that he told us about the traffic management.

I can only conclude that for me and I am sure for others this a huge backward step in the modern Internet world and for this ISP it will be a huge PR disaster, I for one will never recommend this ISP to anybody I would be to embarrassed. The lack of info about all of this is just downright sad like I said we are going backwards to dial up speed hardly what my hard earned money is paying for. I wait with anticipation as to what Coms's final verdict will be when the data is analysed, however I don't hold out any hope for things reverting back to the way they were with ADSL24, it's a bit like taxes once they are introduced they never get rescinded.

In this day and age people don't just want a web page that loads in the blink of an eye, we have moved on from that it's all about much more than waiting for a gif/jepeg to load like in the old days. This has gone from an excellent ISP (ADSL24) to a total joke with a terrible CS relationship. There is nothing on their website at all stating what/why they have done this at all, for the layman that does not know about these forums they would not have a clue as to what is happening as does it seem their own CS staff!

This is a 2014 ISP that that smacks of deceit and reminds me of the bad old days of the late 80's early 90's.

Steve

Oh yes one other thing while I am on a role, we were told that this all came about from massive packet loss on the network, so I think to myself I will do my P2P NNTP and BBC Iplayer downloading after midnight time. this was my BQM for the past 24 hours, seems that nothing has been fixed at all.


Steve

Edited by stevepressman (Mon 31-Mar-14 23:33:30)

Your live BQM link is in your sig, remember? . And works.

The googledrive link you've just posted seems to want me to log in to google, or else is just duff.